Financial Services Innovators

Financial Services Innovators is a Nigerian financial services innovation association created when the Central Bank of Nigeria, with the Nigerian Inter-bank Settlement System Plc, convened an innovators breakfast forum. The association organizes capacity-building workshops and forums with the Central Bank on policies and guidelines, and it also conducts policy advocacy.

Registered members can use the industry innovation sandbox APIs to build a solution inside the sandbox before asking the Central Bank of Nigeria for regulatory approval. Before the association existed, innovators who needed technical infrastructure to test product viability were typically required to obtain a CBN license and spend months in meetings with banks, fintech players, and NIBSS to launch pilots.