The central bank of Nigeria has reversed its decision to centralize its Open Banking efforts with NIBSS, the national payment settlement mechanism.

The decision was reversed after intense consultations with industry players. The central bank has aligned with the “Open” aggregation model and affirmed NIBSS’ neutrality as a shared service provider.

NIBSS will only support the central bank to develop an Open Banking Registry to meet industry requirements, while the operations of the registry would be the sole responsibility of the regulator.

This decision is a step towards Open Finance, extending access and sharing of consumer data to more financial products and services like loans, consumer credit, investments, and pensions. The central bank is willing to receive further operational and technical feedback from the banking and fintech industry to help make the Open Banking guidelines operational.