Nigeria’s Central Bank has approved the launch of Open Banking, scheduled for August 2025.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has officially approved the implementation of Open Banking, one person with direct knowledge of the process told Notadeepdive. It makes Nigeria the first African country to implement Open Banking.

The approval, granted at a Tuesday meeting ahead of an August 2025 go-live, comes two long years after the CBN approved draft regulations. With the new timeline, banks must begin Open Banking implementation by August 1, 2025.

The CBN gets a lot of knocks (some well deserved), but there’s no denying: this is genuinely innovative stuff.

Every now and then, certain innovations emerge that completely transform the financial landscape.

Instant transfers did just that in Nigeria.

Today, we take interconnectivity and interoperability for granted—but there was a time you had to pay a “country fee” just to withdraw money from a different branch.

Open Banking could be the next major shift.

Here’s the basic idea:

Banks have accumulated decades’ worth of customer data—but that data has mostly stayed locked away, underutilized and inaccessible to others.

Open Banking changes that by allowing customers to authorize other financial institutions to access their banking data to build new, tailored services.

What could this look like for everyday users?

Say you’re shopping online—“Pay with bank” becomes much smoother. You’ll log into your bank account to authorize payments directly—no need to share passwords or even use a card.

Lending apps could evaluate your creditworthiness using your actual banking history—no more jumping through hoops with ₦20k “starter loans” just to prove yourself.

The push for Open Banking in Nigeria began in June 2017, when a frustrated fintech CEO ran into serious challenges trying to integrate with banks.

That frustration sparked a simple but powerful idea: create a unified API standard so all banks can communicate using the same digital language.

Progress was sluggish—until now.

What Implementation Will Look Like

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has officially greenlit Open Banking and set up various committees focused on technical standards, legal frameworks, stakeholder engagement, and more. Notably, every subcommittee will be chaired by ecosystem members—not CBN staff.

Customers will be able to give explicit consent for fintechs, banks, and other regulated players to access their balances, view transaction history, and even initiate transactions on their behalf.

All of this will be facilitated through a shared, standardized API accessible only to CBN-licensed and supervised entities.

A centralized registry will track all participants, and a strong consent management system—tied to your BVN—will give customers full control over their data.

Startups like Mono, OnePipe, and others that rely on banking data will thrive in this new open ecosystem.

Credit Where It’s Due

This milestone wouldn’t have been possible without the long-term advocacy of the Open Banking Initiative, a non-profit launched by Open Technology Nigeria and led by Adedeji Olowe.

Its membership includes industry leaders like FCMB, Fidelity Bank, KPMG, Paystack, EY, OnePipe, Lendsqr, PwC, and Flutterwave.

After nearly eight years of relentless effort, Open Banking in Nigeria is finally becoming a reality.

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