Virtual accounts have officially overtaken physical cards as the primary payment rail for businesses in Nigeria. According to new transaction data released on January 26, 2026, by the fintech firm Nomba, virtual accounts now facilitate 75 percent of all transactions processed through its API platform.
During the 2025 fiscal year, the company processed 122 billion Naira across 1.85 million transactions. The shift marks a significant departure from card-heavy reliance, as merchants move toward bank-transfer-based systems to ensure higher success rates and instant settlement.
The rapid adoption of virtual accounts is largely attributed to the unreliability and high failure rates associated with traditional card channels. Nomba CEO Yinka Adewale noted that businesses are standardizing on payment rails that provide instant reconciliation and are not dependent on whether a specific card network is available.
By using static and dynamic virtual accounts, merchants can assign dedicated account numbers to customers or specific transactions, allowing for automated payment verification without manual intervention. This “transfer-first” culture has become so dominant that transaction volumes on Nomba’s platform grew 46-fold between January and December 2025.
While virtual accounts lead the domestic market, Nomba is also expanding its “physical” digital footprint. In late December 2025, the firm integrated Apple Pay across its network of over 300,000 POS terminals to cater to the diaspora and international tourists.
This move allows for Tap-to-Pay functionality on the streets of Lagos and Abuja, bypassing the high failure rates of foreign plastic cards. However, for the average Nigerian business, the priority remains domestic stability; enterprise transactions above 1 million Naira accounted for 48 percent of total transaction value in 2025, with almost all of these high-value payments routed through virtual account APIs.
As 2026 progresses, the fintech industry is shifting toward “invisible” payment infrastructure. With the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) forecasting a bullish run for the financial sector, winners are expected to be those who integrate AI-driven fraud detection and seamless API-led accounting. Nomba’s data suggests that the “card-not-present” era is being replaced by an “account-is-present” reality, where the bank transfer, powered by virtual account technology is no longer a backup but the preferred standard for Nigerian commerce.
