In a major move to fortify Nigeria’s financial system, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced that Nigerian banks have committed to a strict timeline of under 30 minutes for responding to fraud alerts.
This decisive measure is expected to drastically improve fund recovery rates and mitigate systemic risks across the banking sector.
The disclosure was made by the Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Philip Ikeazor, during the 2026 Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) Technical Kick-Off Session held in Lagos on Wednesday.
Represented by Ibrahim Hassan, Ikeazor outlined the rapidly evolving landscape of financial crime.
He noted that while traditional threats such as ATM card cloning have been largely neutralized, the sector now faces sophisticated challenges including online fraud, social engineering, SIM-swap abuse, insider compromise, and Authorized Push Payment (APP) scams.
“Importantly, the industry has agreed to reduce fraud response times to under 30 minutes, a decisive step that materially improves recovery outcomes and limits systemic exposure,” Ikeazor stated.
He credited the NeFF for coordinating these industry-wide defenses, which now include mandatory two-factor authentication, 24-hour bank fraud desks, and the development of a Standardised APP Scam Framework.
Addressing the technical infrastructure supporting these security measures, Ikeazor highlighted the critical role of identity management.
He explained that the ongoing integration of the Bank Verification Number (BVN) with the National Identification Number (NIN) is successfully closing loopholes used for impersonation and synthetic identity fraud.
Furthermore, he pointed to the migration to ISO 20022 standards as a transformative development. This global standard offers richer transaction data, enabling better traceability, analytics, and early fraud detection.
“This alignment with global standards positions Nigeria to confront increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes with modern, data-driven tools,” he added.
Rakiya O. Yusuf, Director of the Payments System Supervision Department and Chairman of NeFF, corroborated these sentiments.
She noted that despite the exponential growth in digital transaction volumes, sustained collaboration among banks, infrastructure operators, and law enforcement has secured the integrity of the payment ecosystem.