Report urges banks to share fraud intelligence
New report says stronger collaboration could reduce fraud and build greater trust in Nigeria's digital finance system.
Nigeria’s financial system is processing more digital transactions than ever before. The challenge now is ensuring trust grows as quickly as the technology behind it.
A new report by the Bridgforte Centre for Global Impact says stronger collaboration among banks, fintech companies and regulators could become one of the country’s biggest advantages in the fight against financial fraud.
The report, Trust Architecture in Platform-Led Finance, found that while Nigeria has made progress in reducing fraud losses, financial institutions still share information less effectively than the cybercriminal networks targeting them.
Presenting the report at its launch in Lagos, the founder of Bridgforte and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Aishah Ahmad, said trust should no longer be viewed as a competitive advantage for individual institutions but as a shared asset that benefits the entire financial ecosystem.
The report was based on a closed-door executive roundtable held in February 2026 involving 30 senior leaders from Nigeria’s banking, fintech and regulatory sectors. One encouraging finding was that fraud losses have begun to decline following stronger industry cooperation.
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According to the report, losses from fraud in Nigeria’s digital payments ecosystem rose from ₦12.7 billion in 2021 to ₦52.26 billion in 2024, largely because of a single ₦31.1 billion incident. By 2025, however, losses had fallen to ₦25.85 billion, suggesting that coordinated efforts across the industry are beginning to produce results.
Industry leaders believe even greater gains are possible. Speaking during a panel discussion, Sparkle founder and former Diamond Bank Chief Executive Officer, Uzoma Dozie, argued that financial institutions need to become as coordinated as the cybercriminals they are trying to stop.
“The real organised sector today is the cybercriminals because they share information. Banks do not,” he said.
According to Dozie, Nigeria’s banking industry developed at a time when institutions protected customer information as a competitive asset. Today’s digital economy, however, demands greater cooperation, particularly as fraud schemes become increasingly sophisticated.
He also called for faster implementation of open banking, describing it as essential for building a more connected and secure financial ecosystem.
The report suggests that fraud is not the only issue affecting public confidence.
Participants ranked transaction failures and poor service reliability as the biggest threats to trust in digital finance, ahead of fraud, cybersecurity and data privacy concerns. Slow dispute resolution and weak customer support also emerged as significant concerns for consumers.
When respondents were asked to rate trust across Nigeria’s financial ecosystem on a scale of one to 10, the average score was 5.4, indicating moderate confidence but also considerable room for improvement.
Executive Director of the Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, Prof. Chizor Ndukwe-Okafor, said improving customer experience should become a strategic priority for financial institutions, while also calling for more accessible banking services for persons with disabilities.
The report also highlighted examples of proactive industry investment.
PiggyVest co-founder Odunayo Eweniyi recalled that the company temporarily suspended its services shortly after launching in 2016 to strengthen its security systems, arguing that long-term customer trust sometimes requires difficult short-term decisions.
Looking ahead, Bridgforte recommended mandatory industry-wide fraud intelligence sharing, stronger collaboration between the CBN and the National Identity Management Commission on interoperable digital identity systems, and greater investment in customer dispute resolution.
Many of those recommendations align with the CBN’s Payments System Vision 2028, which includes plans to introduce a National Payments Trust Index to strengthen confidence in Nigeria’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
With Nigeria’s financial system now processing more than ₦1.07 quadrillion in annual transactions, the report concludes that deeper collaboration across banks, fintechs and regulators will be critical to protecting customers, reducing fraud and supporting the continued growth of Africa’s largest digital payments market.
