A disruption to United Bank for Africa’s mobile banking application has left some customers unable to access their accounts or complete transactions, highlighting the growing dependence of Nigeria’s consumers and businesses on digital financial services.
UBA, one of Nigeria’s largest banks, apologised to customers after a prolonged disruption to its mobile banking application prevented some users from accessing the platform. Customers reported difficulties logging in and carrying out transactions, prompting complaints on social media.
The bank said it was working to restore normal service and advised customers to use alternative channels while the problem was being resolved, according to local reports.
The incident comes as Nigeria’s payments system has become increasingly digital. The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, or NIBSS, said electronic payment transactions reached $806.6 billion in the period covered by its latest figures, based on an exchange rate of about ₦1,326.52 to the dollar.
Transactions on the NIBSS Instant Payments platform reached 11.2 billion, up 120% from 2022, according to NIBSS.
That growth means interruptions to banking applications can have consequences beyond inconvenience. Mobile banking apps are increasingly used for transfers, bill payments, airtime purchases and other everyday transactions that once required cash, an ATM or a physical bank branch.
Nigeria’s central bank has been tightening rules around the resilience and security of digital payments as adoption accelerates.
Mobile money transactions rose 81% to $280.5 billion in 2025, while transaction volumes increased almost 66% to 28.74 billion, according to central bank data.
The scale of Nigeria’s electronic payments market underscores the potential impact of outages. Electronic transactions reached $214.8 billion in the first quarter of 2025, according to NIBSS.
The central bank has also introduced measures aimed at reducing payment failures and improving the resilience of the country’s financial infrastructure.
NIBSS has begun rolling out the National Payment Stack, a new payment infrastructure intended to modernise and eventually replace its existing instant-payment system. By August, the new platform had recorded 26.55 million transactions worth about $1.06 billion across 48 participating institutions.
UBA’s scale adds another dimension to the disruption. The bank said in its 2025 annual report that it served more than 45 million customers across 24 countries.
For customers, the shift towards digital banking creates a new vulnerability. When a banking application fails, access to money can become dependent on whether alternative channels such as USSD, ATMs, cards or physical branches remain available.
The UBA incident shows a wider challenge facing Nigeria’s digital economy: as financial services move increasingly from cash and branches to always-on digital platforms, reliability becomes as important as speed.
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Mohd Hassan has extensive experience in news gathering, editing, and writing for the newswire industry, Contact – Info@impactnews-wire.com
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