BY NKECHI NAECHE-ESEZOBOR —-Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed operations in the country’s payment ecosystem to complete migration to the ISO 20022 messaging standard and implement mandatory geo-tagging of payment terminals on or before October 31, 2025.
This is contained in a circular signed by Dr Rakiya O. Yusuf, Director of the Payments System Supervision Department at the apex bank dated August 25, 2025.
The circular which was. posted on its official website on Tuesday,was directed to Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Microfinance Banks (MFBs), Mobile Money Operators (MMOs), Switching and Processing Companies, Payment Terminal Service Providers (PTSPs), Payment Solution Service Providers (PSSPs), Super Agents, and other licensed operators that ISO 20022 has come to stay.
The statement further reads: “IS0 20022 Compliance
1. All payment transaction messages exchanged domestically or internationally must be formatted in IS0 20022 in line with CBN and SWIFT specifications
2. All institutions shall ensure complete and accurate population of mandatory data elements, including payer/payee identifiers, merchant/agent identifiers. and transaction metadata.
3. All in-scope institutions must complete migration activities and be fully compliant not later than October 31, 2025.
Terminal Geo-Location
1. All existing and newly deployed payment terminals must have native geolocation services enabled, with Double-Frequency GPS receivers for reliable geo-location service
2. All payment terminals must be registered with a Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) with accurate latitude/longitude coordinates indicating the Merchant/Agent place of business/service and status.
3. All Operators (PTSAS, PTSPS, PTADs, Acquirers) are to ensure their PoS Terminals and Applications are duly certified by the National Central Switch to align with the listed standards.
4. As part of the Certification process, all payment terminals must have the National Central Switch SDK for Geolocation monitoring and Geofencing implemented within the libraries of its PoS Application.
5. Android Operating System (OS) v10 is the minimum OS requirement across all terminals to ensure compatibility and seamless integration with the National Central Switch Geolocation SDK.
6. The SDK for geolocation monitoring must be initialised at the registered business/service location.
7. A radius of 10 meters outside the registered business/service location is the permitted geofence for all merchant activity.
8. Geo-location data must be captured at transaction initiation and included in the message payload as a mandatory reporting field.
9. Terminals not directly routed to a PTSA are not permitted to transact.
10. All existing terminals and newly registered terminals must ensure strict adherence to the approved MSC code per sector
11. All existing terminals must be geo-tagged within 60 days of this circular new terminals going forward must be geo-tagged before certification and activation.
The apex bank added that compliance validation exercises will commence on October 20, 2025.
