The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), Nigeria’s central payment infrastructure operator, has built its National Payment Stack (NPS) using jPTS, a payment switch based on the open-source jPOS technology from Transactility, Inc., the company behind the payment processing software. The platform combines capabilities developed by NIBSS with selected open and enterprise technologies.
NIBSS has used jPOS in its payment infrastructure for years, particularly to process ISO 8583 transactions. For NPS, the operator used jPTS and its newly introduced ISO 20022 support to build a switch for the Nigerian payments market. ISO 20022 provides the messaging standard underpinning the platform’s instant payment capabilities.
Access to the source code gives NIBSS control over the platform’s architecture, product roadmap and ongoing development, including the intellectual property it creates for NPS. The approach also allows the operator to adapt the system to changing market and regulatory requirements without depending on a proprietary vendor’s software release schedule.
Premier Oiwoh, managing director/CEO of Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), said:
“The NPS was designed and built for the scale and demands of the Nigerian payments market. The jPOS ecosystem gives us the flexibility to continue developing the platform as the ecosystem evolves.”
NPS supports instant account-to-account transfers, QR payments for merchants, alias-based addressing using identifiers such as phone numbers, and bulk payments. Its modular architecture is designed to meet the performance and availability requirements of national payment infrastructure while providing a base for additional services.
The implementation combines NIBSS’s payments expertise with existing technology from the jPOS ecosystem. That division of work leaves the Nigerian operator responsible for the platform’s development while drawing on an established payment processing stack.
“This development is an important milestone for Transactility and the wider payments community,” said Alejandro Revilla, founder and CTO of Transactility. “We are proud that NIBSS selected technologies from the jPOS ecosystem for the National Payment Stack. NPS shows how open technology and local engineering can be used to build national payment infrastructure at scale.”
