The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has launched the National Payment Stack (NPS), a new generation digital infrastructure designed to transform Nigeria’s financial landscape and usher in the future of real-time payments.

The solution, officially unveiled in Lagos on Tuesday, is positioned as the successor to the NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) platform, which was launched in 2011 and became Africa’s first real-time account-based payment system.

The Managing Director of NIBSS, Premier Oiwoh, said during the unveiling that the NPS was not just a technological upgrade but a foundational shift in Nigeria’s payment ecosystem. According to him, it was built to meet the challenges of today’s digital economy and to prepare the country for tomorrow’s financial innovations.

“It’s a transition to the future. With NPS, we didn’t just build another instant payment solution, we laid the foundation for Nigeria’s financial future,” Oiwoh said.

Oiwoh explained that the NPS was developed to offer faster transaction processing, better dispute resolution, enhanced fraud prevention, and easier integration for banks, fintechs, and government agencies. He noted that it incorporates ISO 20022, the advanced messaging standard now adopted globally by financial institutions for richer and more structured payment data.

He said the NPS will support both single and bulk payments on the same infrastructure and includes new capabilities such as Request-to-Pay, Direct Debit, automated reconciliation, and advanced KYC verification using identifiers like Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), Registered Company (RC) numbers, and Tax Identification Numbers (TIN).

He further stated that the NPS was designed with multi-currency readiness and cross-border payment capabilities in mind. According to Oiwoh, these features align with Nigeria’s broader ambition to achieve a $1 trillion economy within the next eight years. This target will require more efficient digital infrastructure to support formal transactions, tax collection, government disbursements, and private sector innovations.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which jointly owns NIBSS with deposit money banks, described the new platform as a major leap forward. Speaking on behalf of the CBN, Musa Jimoh, the Director of Payment System Policy, said the NPS is expected to lay a solid foundation for deeper trust, greater financial inclusion, and the next wave of innovation in digital payments. He represented Philip Ikeazor, the Deputy Governor of Financial System Stability at the CBN and Chairman of the NIBSS Board.

Jimoh noted that the NPS reflects Nigeria’s response to the global movement towards smarter, faster, and more interoperable payment systems. He pointed out that with the global financial industry migrating to new standards like ISO 20022, Nigeria must build infrastructure that not only meets international norms but also addresses the country’s specific needs.

He added that the NPS will also improve the implementation of social intervention payments, tax remittances, and other government financial processes by reducing delays, enhancing transparency, and eliminating leakages.

The launch drew support from other government institutions as well. The Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, represented by Deputy Chief of Staff Samuel Egube, commended NIBSS for developing the platform domestically.

Sanwo-Olu described it as a bold example of what African countries can achieve by investing in homegrown solutions. He added that Lagos, as Nigeria’s commercial nerve center, is especially keen on supporting innovations that promote ease of doing business, transparency, and financial inclusion.

Founded in 1993, NIBSS has remained a key player in Nigeria’s digital transformation journey. It manages the core switching and settlement infrastructure for banks, mobile money operators, and government agencies. The organization has introduced several landmark innovations in recent years, including AfriGO, Nigeria’s domestic card scheme launched to reduce dependence on foreign payment brands. In April 2025, NIBSS also introduced instant settlement for point-of-sale (POS) transactions using AfriGO cards, a development that was welcomed by merchants and payment service providers.

The unveiling of the National Payment Stack marks a critical evolution in Nigeria’s payment infrastructure, signaling readiness for the next era of digital finance. While the rollout of NPS is expected to happen in phases, banks and fintechs have already begun exploring integration through the sandbox environment provided by NIBSS, which allows partners to test their solutions with minimal onboarding time.

Industry observers say that with the NPS in place, Nigeria is better positioned to expand financial services to underserved populations, strengthen its regulatory oversight, and potentially become a continental leader in real-time cross-border payments.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says his predictions about the trajectory of artificial intelligence have largely proven correct. What has surprised him, however, is not the technology’s development—but society’s muted response to it.

Speaking on a recent episode of Uncapped with Jack Altman, the OpenAI chief reflected on how far generative AI has come. He believes the company’s latest language model, known as o3, demonstrates reasoning ability on par with a human Ph.D. across many subject domains. But despite the groundbreaking nature of such capabilities, Altman said it feels as though the world hasn’t quite caught up emotionally or institutionally.

“The models can now do the kind of reasoning in a particular domain you’d expect a Ph.D. in that field to be able to do,” Altman said. “And we’re like, ‘Oh okay…’ and we’re not that impressed. It’s crazy.”

Altman admitted he expected society to feel more changed—perhaps even shaken—by the rollout of these highly capable systems. Tools like ChatGPT have entered widespread use across the globe, augmenting everything from corporate workflows to scientific research. Yet everyday life, he noted, remains relatively stable and recognizable.

“If I told you in 2020, ‘We’re going to make something like ChatGPT that’s as smart as a Ph.D. student, and deploy it to a significant portion of the world who use it regularly,’ you’d think the world would look way more different than it does right now,” he said.

Altman believes OpenAI has effectively “cracked” reasoning—a cornerstone of human-level intelligence—and that this is reflected in o3’s performance on math problems, logic tasks, and coding challenges that would traditionally demand years of study and expertise.

However, he concedes that AI remains a co-pilot for now, not a driver. In his view, the real shift will come when AI becomes capable of acting autonomously. For example, AI systems helping scientists triple their productivity are significant, but the game-changer will be when the AI itself can independently conduct research or discover new scientific principles.

“We don’t have AI maybe autonomously doing science,” he said. “But if a human scientist is three times as productive using o3, that’s still a pretty big deal… and as that keeps going… figure out novel physics…”

Is Altman Worried About the Risks?

Unlike other AI leaders—such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei or DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis—who have publicly warned about catastrophic risks from superintelligent systems, Altman downplayed fears of existential doom. Instead, he acknowledged concerns that are more grounded, even mundane.

“I don’t know about way riskier,” he said, referring to powerful future models. “It gets riskier in sillier ways. Like, I’d be afraid to have a humanoid robot walking around my house that might fall on my baby, unless I really, really trusted it.”

Altman pointed out that damaging outcomes don’t always require high-tech sci-fi scenarios. The ability to cause large-scale disruption—from cyberattacks to bioweapons—can be executed without robotics or even general AI.

But he admitted that beyond the capability frontier, the societal picture remains murky.

“I think we will get to extremely smart and capable models—capable of discovering important new ideas, capable of automating huge amounts of work. But I feel totally confused about what society looks like if that happens,” he said.

Maybe in The Future, With more Capable Models

Altman’s comments highlight a growing disconnect between AI’s actual capabilities and public perception. For a technology now underpinning everything from legal research to code generation, public discourse remains relatively subdued. That gap, he suggests, may soon narrow.

But while AI insiders continue to push boundaries, Altman said it’s time for a broader conversation—not just about what the technology can do, but how society should adapt to and benefit from it.

“Maybe at this point more people should be talking about: how do we make sure society gets the value out of this?” he concluded.

Altman, long at the forefront of the AI boom, remains bullish on progress. But even he is unsure what a future shaped by autonomous, Ph.D.-level AI might actually look like—or how prepared the world will be when it finally arrives.

Would you switch jobs for $100 million? Mark Zuckerberg hopes so — if you’re a top-flight AI researcher, that is. The Meta CEO has tried to poach staffers from OpenAI and Google DeepMind for his new “superintelligence” unit with compensation packages worth more than $100 million, according to OpenAI chief Sam Altman. But so far, Altman added, “none of our best people have decided to take him up on that.” Altman said his employees believe OpenAI has the best shot at achieving artificial general intelligence.