Nigerian banks: what is going on? Transactions have been failing and reversals are now a constant. This MUST be fixed urgently. Stop paying dividends to your investors and invest some of your profits in better technologies. I understand that NIBSS is part of this weak link – and if that is the case, inject funds into NIBSS and evolve the ownership. Stop these reversals; they’re affecting our operations in Nigeria.
Comment on Social Media Feeds
Comment 1: Exactly my thoughts Sir. Why declare so much profits when your core technology is failing. Look at what Digital Banks like Opay, Palmpay, and Kuda are bringing to the table. They now have Bank Transfer Network Monitors that tell you the availability of each Bank to receive a transfer before you make a transfer.
Comment 2: This is very annoying because I identified these issues and approached some of them to help fix them and put in place a more robust system but met roadblocks! These banks also carry massive cybersecurity vulnerabilities but they are waiting without action
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Comment 3: Nigerian banks should be downgraded as most are not really equipped to deliver national-scale banking. They take delight in posting their profits in the billions and that’s as far as it goes. It’s become a status symbol to reach a certain threshold in profits.
Comment 4: Reversals aren’t constant. Individuals are losing money daily, with banks refusal to reverse. Most tell you it would be settled in 10working days; Which doesn’t happen most of the times.
---
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
Thank you for this post. I made the same observation a while ago in Nigeria. In Canada, they started with 3G and determined that with digital payments and ATM’s the Imterac network will npt be able to support it. The funded the development of a dedicated network. This helped but it led to massive adoption of ePayments and ATM’s exploded all over North America.
The argued ppl don’t just want to be using ATM and that smartphones had become ubiquitous. The banking industry funded the development of 4G network. The world is enjoying it today but the initiative was driven by banking.
The Nigerian govt needs to charge the bank to mark put a percentage of their profits to innovation in the industry. Nigerian banks are not really innovative. Meanwhile they are the ones holding the nation back in industrialization. Electricity we use today was funded by JP Moegan, a banker and Thomas Edison knew if he had a solution that worked, the banks wld fund it.
The banks in Nigeria re declaring astronomical profits for 2022-2023 because they mostly used funds for customer FOREX bids to buy the FOREX and sell tlback to customers at black market rates.
Sometimes I look at the so called bank CEO’s in Nigeria and wonder what their mission in life is. We can definitely do better. The opportunity to make impact in Nigeria is enormous.