NIBSS Partners Transactility to Roll Out National Payment Stack

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has partnered with Transactility Incorporated to roll out the National Payment Stack (NPS), a next-generation instant payments platform designed to strengthen Nigeria’s digital financial infrastructure.

The partnership will see NIBSS leverage Transactility’s jPOS open-source technology to deploy the platform, which uses the ISO 20022 messaging standard to support the evolving demands of Nigeria’s payments ecosystem.

NIBSS, Nigeria’s central payment infrastructure operator, said it designed and developed the NPS using a modular architecture that combines its in-house capabilities with selected open-source and enterprise technologies.

At the core of the platform is Transactility’s jPTS switching technology, built on jPOS, a widely used framework for payment processing. NIBSS said the technology, alongside its newly introduced ISO 20022 support, would provide the foundation for a payment switch tailored to the scale and requirements of the Nigerian market.

The partnership builds on NIBSS’ longstanding use of jPOS within its payment infrastructure, particularly for processing transactions based on the ISO 8583 messaging standard.

According to the company, access to the source code and the ability to customise the technology will allow it to retain control over the NPS architecture, product roadmap and operational development, as well as intellectual property developed for the platform.

Business Post gathered that the arrangement is also expected to give NIBSS greater flexibility to adapt the infrastructure to changing market demands and regulatory requirements without depending entirely on a proprietary technology vendor’s release cycle.

Speaking on the partnership, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NIBSS, Mr Premier Oiwoh, said the platform was designed to meet the scale and demands of Nigeria’s payments market.

“The NPS was designed and built for the scale and demands of the Nigerian payments market. The jPOS ecosystem gives us the flexibility to continue developing the platform as the ecosystem evolves,” he said.

The National Payment Stack supports account-to-account instant transfers, QR-code merchant payments, alias-based payments using identifiers such as phone numbers, and bulk payments.

The platform is designed to provide the performance and availability required for national payment infrastructure while creating a foundation for new financial services as the market develops.

On his part, Transactility’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Mr Alejandro Revilla, described the partnership as a milestone for the company and the wider payments industry, noting that the NPS demonstrated how open technology and local engineering could be combined to build national payment infrastructure at scale.

The rollout comes as Nigeria continues to expand digital payments and strengthen the infrastructure supporting electronic transactions across banks, fintech companies, merchants and consumers.

By combining NIBSS’ domestic payments expertise with an adaptable technology stack, the initiative is intended to give the country greater flexibility in developing its payment systems, supporting new services and responding to emerging requirements across the financial ecosystem.