Nigerian fintechs report delayed, failed transactions as ‘NIBSS suffers downtime’

The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) is experiencing a downtime, leading to delays in completing electronic transactions.

Financial technology firms (fintechs) notified customers of the disruption in transactions in separate notices seen by TheCable on Wednesday.

The NIBSS instant payment platform is an account-based, real-time electronic funds transfer (EFT) system.

It enables financial institutions to provide online real-time funds transfer services to their customers through all available electronic channels.

TheCable understands that customers are having a hard time making simple transactions like the payment of electricity bills.

A message sent to customers by Eversend, a financial technology firm, said delays in naira transactions will last for a while.

“NIBSS is experiencing some delays in processing Naira transactions, this may affect your NGN top-ups and payouts in the app,” Eversend said.

Also, Kuda Bank told customers that “NIBSS, the settlement partner for all banks, is having intermittent issues completing transfers at the moment so money sent to your Kuda account might be delayed and transfers to other banks may not be possible”.

“As the issues are being fixed by NIBBS, we’ll keep you updated on our status page – status.kuda.com,” Kuda said.

“Please, note that transfers between Kuda accounts and transfers between Kuda and PalmPay accounts are working fine.”

Other financial institutions are also being affected by the downtime.

A customer of the Guaranteed Trust Bank (GTB) said a transfer made at 2 pm is yet to be received by the recipient.

“I made a transfer and I was debited but the person was not credited till now,” he said.

Another customer of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) said transfers have also been difficult.