Payment methods in Nigeria

The market

Nigeria pays online with cards and transfers. Visa and Mastercard debit cards issued by Nigerian banks carry card payments and settle in naira at T+1; instant transfers between accounts over NIBSS Instant Payment, live since 2011, are the rail Nigerians use most, and the licensed providers settle over it. MTN MoMo, the wallet of the mobile operator MTN, reaches payers who keep money on the phone rather than in a bank, confirms instantly and takes payouts. The Central Bank of Nigeria licenses payment companies by category — switching, mobile money, payment solutions — and the licensed provider is the party in the payment chain.

How Tranzify clients launch

A licensed client asks for the Nigerian integrations and enables Flutterwave or Paystack from the catalogue under its own contracts and licence; the platform runs under the client’s registration and domain, the licensed local provider performs the intermediation, and Tranzify supplies the software and the integrations. Both providers cover Visa, Mastercard and MTN MoMo, with payouts; MTN MoMo is enabled on a client’s request. The checkout shows a card form and the wallet; routing by method picks the provider, two providers cover each other on a failure, and a card decline cascades to the wallet. Every payment is journaled for five years, and the client’s system receives the final status by webhook.

MTN MoMo

An MTN MoMo payment is confirmed on the phone, so the orchestration keeps the order open until the provider reports the confirmation and then calls the webhook. Payouts to a Nigerian phone number run through Flutterwave or Paystack; refunds are not part of the wallet flow in the catalogue, and the provider handles a refund as a payout. Card payouts go through the same providers.