A new bill wants a dedicated fintech regulator in Nigeria - The CBN hasn't said a word.
Nigeria's fintech industry moves trillions of naira every day, but nobody is fully in charge of it. A new bill wants to fix that and it is already splitting the room.
You transfer money on Opay in the morning, take a quick loan on Carbon before noon, pay your electricity bill through Quickteller in the afternoon, and cash out at a POS agent on your way home.
Millions of Nigerians do exactly this every day without thinking twice. But here is something most people have never stopped to ask: who is actually watching over all of that to make sure it is safe, fair, and working in your interest?
The answer, honestly, is complicated. And a new bill moving through Nigeria's House of Representatives thinks it has found a solution, although not everyone agrees.
The Problem This Bill Is Trying to Solve
Right now, a single fintech company must answer to multiple regulators simultaneously: the CBN for payments, the SEC for investments, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission for data, and the consumer protection agency for customer treatment. One startup, doing one thing, juggling four different government bodies.
This did not happen overnight. Nigeria's fintech sector grew so fast that regulation could not keep up. In 2012, barely a handful of serious digital payment companies existed. By 2025, nearly 400 licensed firms were operating, processing transactions touching every corner of the economy. The rules were written for a smaller, slower world, and the industry has long outgrown them.
A lawmaker named Fuad Laguda from Surulere, Lagos, sponsored a bill to create a Nigerian Fintech Regulatory Commission—a single body dedicated to overseeing fintech companies. The bill passed its second reading in October 2025, and a public hearing was held on March 2, 2026.
Support came from powerful corners of the industry. The Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria, representing over two million POS operators across all 36 states, strongly backed the bill. Their argument is hard to dismiss: these are the people running POS machines in markets and rural communities where traditional banks have never opened a branch, and right now, nobody is specifically and legally focused on protecting them.
But some of the biggest fintech names pushed back. OPay argued that adding a new regulator risks making everything more expensive and complicated, not less. FairMoney's managing director gave a practical example: the CBN would still control what a microfinance bank charges a customer, but the new commission would control how that charge is explained.
One simple action, charging a fee, now involves two regulators, two compliance processes, and potentially conflicting rules. That is where innovation slows down, and founders start looking at other markets.
Where This Is Heading
The most uncomfortable detail in this story is not the disagreement between supporters and critics. It is the silence from the institution whose opinion matters most. The Central Bank of Nigeria did not send a representative to the hearing and has issued no public statement on a bill to establish a new commission that would operate alongside its own authority.
The bill now goes back to the committee for further review. If it passes, Nigeria will have a dedicated fintech watchdog for the first time, either the structural fix the industry has needed or a new layer of bureaucracy that makes building here even harder.
For the ordinary Nigerian who wants their transfer to go through safely, their loan to be fair, and their data to be protected, the hope is that whoever ends up in charge is actually focused on that person first and the paperwork second.
Do you think Nigeria needs a separate regulator for fintech, or is the CBN already doing enough?
