A new survey by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that 87.5% of fintech companies in the country now deploy artificial intelligence (AI) primarily for fraud detection, highlighting how digital security concerns are shaping technology adoption.
The findings, published in the CBN’s Fintech Report 2025, show that fraud management is the dominant AI use case, far outpacing other applications like customer service chatbots and credit risk modeling within Nigeria’s fast-growing digital finance ecosystem.
Okay News reports that the survey indicates a strong industry focus on mitigating risks, with the CBN noting that the heavy reliance on AI for fraud control underscores the severity of the challenge, which was described in stakeholder workshops as a “big issue in the industry.” Beyond fraud detection, 62.5% of fintechs use AI for customer service, while 37.5% apply it to credit scoring and customer onboarding processes, with only 12.5% of firms reporting no current AI use at all.
The report situates this trend within Nigeria’s rapid digitization, where nearly 11 billion real-time payment transactions were processed in 2024, more than double the 2022 volume. Despite this growth and the country’s exit from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list, the CBN warns that rapid expansion has increased the system’s vulnerability to fraud and weak controls at some fast-scaling companies. Fintechs have expressed strong interest in regulatory guidance for AI, with 62.5% keen to participate in an AI-focused regulatory sandbox, while also citing limited technical talent and regulatory clarity as major barriers to deeper adoption.
