By Peter Onyekachukwu 
By Peter Onyekachukwu
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed banks, fintechs, and licensed payment operators to install GPS tracking on all Point of Sale (PoS) terminals before October 31, 2025.
In a circular dated August 25 and signed by Rakiya Yusuf, Director of Payments System Supervision, the CBN said every PoS device must have geo-location services with double-frequency GPS receivers for reliable tracking. Operators are also required to register each terminal with a Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) and provide accurate merchant coordinates.
“All existing terminals must be geo-tagged within 60 days, while new devices must be tagged before certification and activation,” the circular stated. Geo-location data will also be a mandatory field in all transaction reports.
The apex bank explained that the move followed rising complaints of fraud and misuse of PoS machines, including their deployment in ransom collection by kidnappers.
Additionally, the CBN ordered all operators to migrate to ISO 20022 — the global SWIFT messaging standard — by October 31, 2025. From that date, all payment transactions, domestic and international, must comply with ISO 20022 formatting with complete payer, payee, and merchant identifiers.
The bank further mandated that PoS devices run on Android version 10 or higher to integrate with the National Central Switch, which will host software for monitoring and geofencing. Full supervision of compliance will begin on October 20, 2025.