The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) Plc spends at least N150 million every month to power the infrastructure supporting electronic payments across the country with about N100 million of the expenditure going to diesel alone.
The disclosure highlights the energy cost attached to maintaining critical financial infrastructure that must remain available around the clock as banks, fintech companies and other financial institutions increasingly depend on electronic payment channels.
Premier Oiwoh, Managing Director of NIBSS, disclosed the expenditure at the first anniversary of Tango Brook Technologies in Lagos, where he was represented by Innocent Osagiede, Head of Operations and Finance/CFO Directorate at NIBSS.
According to the figures disclosed at the event, NIBSS spends no less than N150 million monthly on power, of which approximately N100 million is consumed by diesel.
That leaves roughly N50 million of the monthly power bill outside diesel expenditure, although the disclosure did not provide a detailed breakdown of the remaining amount.
At the current spending level, NIBSS’ total power expenditure translates to an annualised cost of at least N1.8 billion, while diesel alone represents an annualised run rate of approximately N1.2 billion.
The figures illustrate the cost of maintaining the energy redundancy required for an institution sitting at the centre of Nigeria’s rapidly expanding digital payment ecosystem.
NIBSS provides infrastructure connecting banks and other financial institutions and operates platforms supporting the processing and settlement of electronic transactions.
Its infrastructure includes the Nigeria Central Switch, which facilitates interoperability among participants in the country’s retail payments system.
Four Generators Support Operations
To protect its systems against interruptions in public electricity supply, NIBSS maintains four generators comprising two 800 KVA units and two 500 KVA units.
The organisation also maintains a 22,000-litre diesel storage tank and a separate day tank supplying its generators.
Maintaining sufficient fuel reserves is treated as an operational requirement because an extended power interruption could eventually force servers supporting payment operations to shut down.
The company has consequently combined physical fuel monitoring with technology that allows generator fuel levels to be tracked and replenished before supplies reach critical levels.
For NIBSS, the financial cost of maintaining redundant electricity supply is secondary to ensuring continuous availability of its infrastructure.
The scale of that requirement is becoming increasingly significant as electronic payments expand across Nigeria.
Payment Stack Crosses 100 Million Transactions
The power-cost disclosure comes as NIBSS’ National Payment Stack records rapid transaction growth.
NIBSS announced separately that the NPS had processed more than 100 million successful transactions as of September 25, 2026.
The milestone represents a sharp increase from the 26.55 million transactions valued at N1.4 trillion that had been processed across 48 participating institutions during the earlier phase of the platform’s rollout in August.
The NPS is an ISO 20022-compliant payment infrastructure developed to modernise Nigeria’s domestic payment architecture and ultimately succeed the legacy NIBSS Instant Payment system.
It provides a common infrastructure for participating banks and other financial service providers while supporting richer transaction information, interoperability and automated payment processing.
The combination of rising transaction volumes and NIBSS’ disclosed energy expenditure underscores a less visible cost behind Nigeria’s digital payments expansion: the physical infrastructure required to keep an increasingly digital financial system continuously available.
At a minimum of N150 million every month, maintaining power alone now represents an annualised N1.8 billion operating requirement for NIBSS with diesel accounting for roughly two-thirds of the disclosed monthly expenditure.
