Data localisation is often framed as keeping data in-country and protecting it, but the Central Bank of Nigeria’s new rules are about whether banks and fintechs can access critical data, recover services, and keep processing payments when their infrastructure fails.
“Localisation is not the same thing as resilience,” said Dr Rakiya Yusuf, Director of the Payment System Supervision Department at the CBN, at TechCabal’s Insights Power Brunch, organised by TechCabal’s research and intelligence arm in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday, September 10.
In June, the CBN directed banks, payment companies, switches, and other payments-system participants to store and manage payment data generated in Nigeria locally by January 1, 2027. In 2025, Nigeria processed more than ₦1.2 quadrillion ($880.51 billion) worth of transactions, and the CBN said this rapid growth drove its localisation move.
As digital payments grow, central banks including India and Uganda are seeing that concentrating critical financial data and infrastructure on foreign cloud providers could leave parts of their financial system exposed to disruptions, dependencies, and decisions outside their control.
Originally published by TechCabal.