In the last few years, the Nigerian Financial Technology (FinTech) space has witnessed exponential growth and has attracted both local and international investors. Nigeria is home to some unicorns especially in the payments segments of the financial services sector. Like in most jurisdictions, the regulators appear to be playing ‘catch up’ with FinTechs and it has been said that there appears to be an over regulation of FinTechs in Nigeria.
A Payment Solution Service Providers (PSSP) licence is a financial licence within the payments system which is issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). A PSSP licence authorizes the licensee to provide and operate payment processing gateway and portals, solution/application development, and merchant service aggregation and collections services. A PSSP license does not provide the authorization to hold customers’ funds or create and issue wallets. PSSPs are predominantly Financial Technology (FinTech) companies that enable and facilitate online and offline payments solutions which include collections, check-out, biller aggregation and payout services.