NIBSS has deployed its National Payment Stack using Transactility’s jPOS-based technology to support ISO 20022 instant payments in Nigeria.
The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the country’s central payment infrastructure operator, owned by the Central Bank of Nigeria and all licensed deposit money banks, has used US-based Transactility’s jPOS open-source technology to roll out the National Payment Stack (NPS). The ISO 20022 instant payments platform was designed and developed by NIBSS for Nigeria’s payments ecosystem. NPS supports account-to-account instant transfers, QR merchant payments, alias-based addressing such as phone numbers, and bulk payments.
Open-source foundation
NIBSS designed NPS using a modular architecture that combines its own capabilities with selected open and enterprise technologies. It chose Transactility’s open-source stack as the foundation, including the jPTS switch, which is built on jPOS, an open-source framework for ISO 8583 payment processing. NIBSS has used jPOS in its payment infrastructure for many years, particularly for ISO 8583 transaction processing, and for NPS it used jPTS with its newly introduced ISO 20022 support to build a switch designed for the Nigerian market.
With full access to the source code and the ability to customise the Transactility stack, NIBSS retains control of the NPS architecture, product roadmap, and operational development, as well as the intellectual property it has developed for the platform. Using source-accessible technology also allows NIBSS to extend the platform and respond to market and regulatory requirements without depending on a proprietary vendor’s release cycle.
Building national payment infrastructure
Premier Oiwoh, Managing Director and CEO of NIBSS, stated that NPS was designed and built for the scale and demands of the Nigerian payments market. According to Oiwoh, the jPOS ecosystem gives NIBSS the flexibility to continue developing the platform as the ecosystem evolves. NPS is designed to deliver the performance and availability required of national payment infrastructure, while providing a foundation for new services as the market develops.
Alejandro Revilla, Founder and CTO of Transactility, described the development as an important milestone for the company and the wider payments community, adding that NPS shows how open technology and local engineering can be used to build national payment infrastructure at scale. Transactility is the commercial steward of jPOS, offering products including jPTS, jCard, and ISO/Bridge, and serves clients in more than 120 countries. NIBSS, incorporated in 1993, provides infrastructure for instant clearing and settlement of interbank transfers, KYC processes through the Bank Verification Number (BVN) system, and point-of-sale payments. The NPS rollout extends NIBSS’s long-standing use of jPOS from ISO 8583 processing to the ISO 20022 standard.
