Digital payment fraud losses in Nigeria have reduced drastically to 51% in recent years, due to AI adoption among fintech firms, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) inaugural fintech ecosystem report.
The survey revealed that approximately 87.5% of fintech firms are deploying AI primarily for fraud detection, which has so far secured the processing of 11 billion transactions against sophisticated threats.
These threats include account takeovers via dark web credentials, synthetic identities blending real IDs with fake data, money laundering through micro-transactions, and cross-border rings exploiting the reputation of Nigeria often orchestrated by foreign actors in Europe, Asia, or North America.
Nigerian fintechs are not just innovating, they’re surviving through AI, through real-time transaction analysis, behavioral flagging, and cross-platform intelligence sharing. This measure has minimized successful fraud despite multiple attempts, by operating invisibly in server rooms to block thousands of attacks without customer awareness.
Meanwhile, exactly 37.5% of firms acknowledged the lack of AI/ML specialists trained in financial fraud, forcing on-the-job learning amid live threats. The same percent raised concerns about the unclear rules on AI in credit decisions, data collection, liability for false positives, and bias risks.
Fintechs seek collaboration, not deregulation. Half want high-quality data infrastructure. 25% desire peer knowledge-sharing, while 75% prioritize ethical AI for transparent credit/risk decisions and inclusive access, with 62.5% eager for CBN regulatory sandboxes to test AI pilots.
CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso has previously led such partnerships, during the Nigeria Fintech Week where officials assured innovators that verification compliance is not an obstacle.
The fintech sector is still plagued by what is called “scam” stigma, while battling with invisible wars which include defending the sector against non-Nigerian schemes.
