Nigeria’s financial institutions collaborate less effectively than the cybercriminal networks targeting them, weakening the sector’s ability to combat fraud despite growing digital payment volumes, according to a new report by the Bridgforte Centre for Global Impact.

The finding emerged yesterday at the launch of the think tank’s maiden flagship report, ‘Trust Architecture in Platform-Led Finance’, where industry leaders, regulators and fintech leaders argued that trust in Nigeria’s financial system depends more on collective action than on the efforts of individual institutions.

Presenting the report, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and founder of Bridgforte, Aishah Ahmad, said the banking industry must begin to view trust as a shared asset across the financial ecosystem rather than a competitive advantage for individual banks or fintech firms.

The report was based on a closed-door Executive Table convened in Lagos in February 2026, bringing together 30 senior executives from across Nigeria’s financial ecosystem.

It found that institutional mistrust and the tendency to withhold information for competitive reasons remain the biggest obstacles to coordinated action against fraud, ranking ahead of legal, regulatory and technological challenges.

According to the report, fraud losses in Nigeria’s digital payments ecosystem rose from N12.7 billion in 2021 to N52.26 billion in 2024, largely driven by a single N31.1 billion incident, before declining to N25.85 billion in 2025 following stronger industry collaboration.

Delivering the keynote address, Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Fundi Tshazibana, described trust as critical economic infrastructure, arguing that financial stability is a prerequisite for sustainable economic growth.

At the panel discussion, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sparkle who is also the former CEO of Diamond Bank, Uzoma Dozie, said cybercriminals currently demonstrate stronger information-sharing practices than financial institutions.

“The real organised sector today is the cyber criminals because they share information. Banks don’t,” he said.

Dozie noted that Nigeria’s banking culture evolved in an era when institutions guarded information as a competitive asset, but argued that the digital finance ecosystem now requires collaboration to strengthen resilience against cyber threats.

He also urged regulators to accelerate the implementation of open banking, describing it as a national imperative rather than an initiative left to voluntary industry participation.

Chief Executive Officer of Bank of Kigali, Dr Dianne Karusisi, echoed similar concerns from a regional perspective, saying banks in many African markets have historically viewed fintech companies and telecommunications operators as competitors instead of partners serving the same customers.

The report also identified poor service delivery, rather than fraud alone, as the biggest driver of declining public confidence in digital finance.

Participants ranked transaction failures and service reliability highest among factors undermining trust, scoring 6.8 out of eight, followed by dispute resolution and customer recourse mechanisms at 6.0.

Both ranked above fraud, cybersecurity, data privacy and artificial intelligence.

When asked to assess the overall resilience of trust within Nigeria’s financial ecosystem on a scale of one to 10, respondents gave an average score of 5.4, indicating only moderate confidence in the system.

Executive Director of the Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, Prof. Chizor Ndukwe-Okafor, said unresolved customer complaints and fragmented accountability continue to erode confidence in formal financial services.

She cited the experience of a customer whose payment card failed while travelling and was advised by his bank to return to the location where the transaction occurred before it could be resolved, describing the incident as an example of weak customer recourse mechanisms.

Ndukwe-Okafor also called for greater accessibility across financial services, noting that many digital platforms and automated teller machines remain difficult for persons with disabilities to use.

Co-founder of PiggyVest, Odunayo Eweniyi, said building trust sometimes requires difficult operational decisions, recalling that the savings platform temporarily suspended its service just months after launching in 2016 to strengthen its security infrastructure.

Among its recommendations, the report urged the CBN and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to strengthen interoperable digital identity infrastructure, called for mandatory industry-wide fraud intelligence sharing, and advised financial institutions to treat dispute resolution as a strategic investment rather than a cost centre.

The recommendations also align with the CBN’s Payments System Vision 2028, which includes plans to establish a National Payments Trust Index.

The report noted that as Nigeria’s financial system processes more than N1.07 quadrillion in annual transactions, strengthening collaboration, customer protection and institutional trust will be essential to sustaining confidence in the country’s rapidly expanding digital finance ecosystem.