LAGOS — In a strategic move to fortify Nigeria’s financial technology ecosystem, the Association of Corporate Communication and Marketing Professionals in Banks (ACAMB) has urged commercial banks nationwide to deepen their integration of digital payment channels, with a particular emphasis on Quick Response (QR) code solutions.
The advocacy took center stage during a recent high-level courtesy visit by ACAMB leadership to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) headquarters in Lagos. The engagement focused heavily on enhancing payment infrastructure resilience, fostering industry collaboration, and establishing unified communication frameworks during system disruptions.
In a statement released following the meeting, ACAMB emphasized that the banking sector requires stronger, more synchronized coordination to ensure accurate, transparent, and timely communication with the public, especially during unexpected system downtimes.
Leading the delegation, ACAMB President Jide Sipe explained that the association is actively building a collaborative platform designed to help financial institutions engage more effectively on emerging industry trends and operational obstacles.
“We want to make sure there is a space where banks engage, share ideas, and ask relevant questions about how to grow the industry as well as manage its challenges,” Sipe stated. He added that ACAMB is consistently engaging vital stakeholders across the financial landscape, including the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), to streamline communication protocols.
Sipe noted that recent system downtime incidents across the banking sector have underscored the critical need for unified, accurate public messaging. To address this permanently, he proposed a stakeholders’ conference that would directly bridge corporate communications heads with NIBSS technical teams.
Responding to the delegation, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NIBSS, Premier Oiwoh, reaffirmed that a reliable, stable digital payment infrastructure is the backbone of financial inclusion and broader national economic growth.
“Seamless and effective payment has always been at the core of what we do, and one key path to achieving this is ensuring a payment system that works. This will, in return, optimize revenue security, better customer experiences, and faster time-to-market, which in turn facilitates economic growth,” Oiwoh said.
To maintain trust and system stability, Oiwoh revealed that NIBSS continuously monitors transaction “velocity” to pre-emptively identify potential system failures, dynamically redistributing processing loads across environments to avert catastrophic downtime.
Highlighting Nigeria’s pioneering role in global fintech, Oiwoh described the NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) system—launched roughly 15 years ago—as a foundational global innovation, being one of the world’s earliest account-based instant transfer systems. He linked its evolving success to the National Payment Stack (NPS), an advanced framework that facilitates secure, real-time local payments, cross-border transactions, and deeper financial inclusion across Nigeria and the wider African continent. According to Oiwoh, Nigeria’s payment architecture compares favorably with elite global platforms, including India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Turning his attention to contactless payment alternatives, the NIBSS boss urged financial institutions to aggressively deploy the NIBSS NQR solution. He characterized NQR as a highly efficient, low-cost, account-based payment system that empowers customers to instantly pay merchants by scanning a unique code via their existing mobile banking applications.
Oiwoh outlined the commercial advantages of NQR, noting it offers instant settlement, zero infrastructure onboarding costs for merchants, immediate transaction notifications for both buyers and sellers, and significantly lower transaction fees.
“There is absolutely no huge cost to acquire or set up the merchant infrastructure; businesses only need to print or display the code,” Oiwoh explained. “Most importantly, there are fewer disputes and chargebacks. The inherent benefits point to an efficient system that further engenders ease for all.”
The deliberation underscored a massive structural shift toward contactless payment infrastructure in Nigeria. ACAMB has strongly urged banks to scale up QR deployment across retail and corporate touchpoints. Oiwoh lauded United Bank for Africa (UBA) as a trailblazer in this regard, noting that the tier-1 bank was among the early adopters to onboard its Point of Sale (POS) merchants onto the NQR network to facilitate cardless transactions.
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Founded in 1996, ACAMB continues to serve as the premier professional body dedicated to reputation management, standardizing public relations, and maintaining robust public confidence within Nigeria’s banking and financial services sector.