Roadmap for Social Protection and Humanitarian Payment Digitisation in Nigeria

The report provides a strategic roadmap to transition humanitarian and social protection cash transfers in Nigeria from physical cash to a permanent digital wallet system within an open-loop payment ecosystem. It identifies key barriers, including recipient unreadiness, regulatory restrictions, and a fragmented digital payment landscape, and proposes a phased approach involving recipient segmentation, digital ecosystem development, and regulatory advocacy.

• Recipients of cash transfers in Nigeria strongly prefer physical cash due to its universal acceptance, the flexibility it provides to meet specific needs, and a general lack of readiness for digital payments, which includes low mobile phone ownership, limited digital literacy, and poor network connectivity.
• Nigeria's digital payment ecosystem is hindered by regulatory barriers, such as the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) delay in issuing payment service bank (PSB) licenses to major operators like MTN and Airtel, high USSD channel costs for end-users, and agent e-float limits capped at 100,000 NGN ($395).
• There is a critical need for better coordination and data sharing between humanitarian organisations and government agencies to avoid recipient duplication and improve targeting. The report recommends establishing a dashboard for projected cash transfer volumes and values and integrating the National Identification Number (NIN) into recipient registries, such as the Poor and Vulnerable Household (PVHH) survey.
• To increase the uptake of digital wallets, the roadmap suggests segmenting recipients based on their digital readiness and using community savings groups as entry points. This approach aims to offer products recipients actually want, such as interest-bearing savings accounts or lines of credit, rather than just digitising the payment delivery.
• The report proposes exploring the transition of closed-loop e-voucher merchant networks, particularly in the BAY states, into open-loop merchant payment systems. This would reduce the reliance on cash-out agents and allow recipients to use digital wallets for common transactions like food, clothing, and health costs.
• The roadmap recommends creating technical working groups to provide direct support to government agencies, including the CBN, NCC, NIMC, NCTO, and NASSCO, to drive a digital cash transfer agenda and reform restrictive regulations.

APA

FSD Africa (2021). Roadmap for Social Protection and Humanitarian Payment Digitisation in Nigeria. https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Nigeria-Digitisation-of-Cash-Transfers-ROADMAP.pdf

Chicago

FSD Africa. Roadmap for Social Protection and Humanitarian Payment Digitisation in Nigeria. 2021. https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Nigeria-Digitisation-of-Cash-Transfers-ROADMAP.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=FSD Africa |title=Roadmap for Social Protection and Humanitarian Payment Digitisation in Nigeria |date=March 2021 |url=https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Nigeria-Digitisation-of-Cash-Transfers-ROADMAP.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{fsdafrica2021roadmap, author = {{FSD Africa}}, title = {{Roadmap for Social Protection and Humanitarian Payment Digitisation in Nigeria}}, institution = {FSD Africa}, year = {2021}, month = mar, url = {https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Nigeria-Digitisation-of-Cash-Transfers-ROADMAP.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }