- Nigerian banks and their customers lost a combined total of ₦134.48 billion to sophisticated fraudulent activities over a six-year period between 2020 and 2025.
- Industry losses experienced an unprecedented 196% surge in 2024 alone, hitting a peak of ₦52.26 billion, driven primarily by a single, catastrophic ₦30 billion internal fraud incident.
- Following the aggressive deployment of stricter regulatory frameworks and enhanced transaction monitoring by the apex bank, electronic payment fraud successfully plummeted by 51% in 2025.
Nigeria’s banking sector and its customers lost a total of ₦134.48 billion to fraudulent activities between 2020 and 2025, according to a newly released report by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Eko Hot Blog reports that the details are contained in the apex bank’s Nigeria Payments System Vision 2028 document, which highlights both the massive expansion of the country’s fintech ecosystem and the growing security vulnerabilities that have accompanied this digital shift.
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During this six-year period, attempted fraud within the banking and payments space surged to ₦187.79 billion, with actual successful financial losses settling at ₦134.48 billion.
The losses spanned across almost every available digital and physical banking channel, including over-the-counter transactions, automated teller machines (ATMs), point-of-sale (POS) terminals, internet banking, e-commerce platforms, cheques, and mobile banking applications.
A year-by-year breakdown shows a steady, concerning upward trajectory in actual fraud losses.
In 2020, losses stood at ₦11.61 billion, which crept up to ₦12.77 billion in 2021, and reached ₦14.32 billion in 2022.
The numbers kept climbing to ₦17.67 billion in 2023, before experiencing a massive, unprecedented spike in 2024 to ₦52.26 billion—marking the highest annual loss recorded in the entire six-year window.
The losses incurred in 2024 alone accounted for nearly 39 percent of the total multi-year fraud drain.
Similarly, attempted fraud followed this dramatic curve, jumping from ₦13.26 billion in 2020 to a peak of ₦86.36 billion in 2024.
Interestingly, the CBN document clarified that the historic 2024 surge was largely distorted by a single, massive internal fraud case that accounted for ₦30 billion.
The apex bank pointed out that while fraud amounts actually declined across internet banking, mobile, and POS channels that year, overall industry losses still skyrocketed by 196 percent because of this solitary internal breach. Concurrently, web fraud incidents also climbed by 169 percent in 2024.
Prior to the 2024 internal breach, fraud tactics shifted dynamically across different channels.
In 2021, a 43 percent drop in web-based fraud was offset by a staggering 276 percent rise in POS fraud incidents.
By 2022, corporate accounts became the primary target, driving a 12 percent rise in overall losses, while ATM fraud witnessed an astronomical surge of over 2,000 percent despite drops in web and mobile channels.
In 2023, the threat pivoted toward the retail sector, where e-commerce-related fraud incidents exploded by 1,961 percent.
However, the trend took a positive turn in 2025, with electronic payment fraud dropping by 51 percent.
Attempted fraud fell to ₦37.57 billion, while actual losses decreased to ₦25.85 billion.
The CBN credited this successful reduction to stricter regulatory enforcement, enhanced monitoring systems, better risk-prevention strategies, and deeper collaboration among financial ecosystem stakeholders.
In the foreword of the Payments System Vision 2028 framework, CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso emphasized that while Nigeria has built one of the world’s most innovative, real-time digital payment systems, the next phase of development must heavily prioritize cybersecurity and systemic trust.
As Nigeria targets an expanded financial inclusion rate, the apex bank plans to utilize stricter regulatory oversight and advanced cyber resilience models to suppress sophisticated fraud networks moving forward.
