Faster payments invite faster fraud, and a system built for speed needs a matching speed of response. That is the logic behind the Central Bank of Nigeria’s December 2025 reforms, which required POS terminals to carry dual network connectivity and mandated banks to resolve fraud complaints within 30 minutes.

The Rule: Speed Met With Speed

The 30-minute response standard is the headline, and it reframes fraud handling from a back-office grievance into a real-time obligation. In a market where POS agents and digital transfers carry a large share of everyday commerce, a delayed fraud response can mean money is gone before a bank even acknowledges the complaint. By setting a clock, the CBN, whose reforms and initiatives increasingly target payment reliability, shifts the cost of slowness onto the institutions best placed to fix it.

Dual network connectivity addresses a quieter failure. POS terminals that drop offline when one network falters strand both the agent and the customer, and a single-network terminal is a single point of failure in a country where uptime cannot be assumed. Requiring two networks builds redundancy into the most common point of contact in Nigeria’s cash-to-digital transition.

For agents, merchants and the fintechs serving them, the reforms raise the compliance bar and the cost of weak systems, but they also raise the floor of trust the whole network sits on. A payment rail people doubt is a payment rail people abandon, and confidence is the asset the CBN is ultimately protecting.

In payments, the response time is the product.