Fraud losses in Nigeria dropped in 2025, but threats are bigger, warns new Adhere report
By Aboki Forex —
Digital payment fraud losses in Nigeria fell from N52.26 billion in 2024 to N25.85 billion in 2025, according to a fresh industry report released in Lagos on Wednesday. But the Adhere Compliance Frontline Forum 2026, themed The Trust Frontier, warned that the drop hides a more dangerous reality: losses have risen about 350% since 2020, even as the number of cases fell roughly 31%.
The report, titled The Compliance Reckoning: Regulating Financial Services in the Age of AI, was produced by Adhere, the AI compliance and fraud platform, in partnership with research and media partner TechCabal. It says attacks are now fewer, more targeted, and far more costly per incident.
Global context and AI-driven fraud
The report puts worldwide financial fraud losses at an estimated $442 billion in 2025. It finds AI-enhanced fraud is about 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods. Nigeria processes more than 10 billion real-time transactions a year but ranks 110th out of 112 countries for fraud protection, with a cybersecurity workforce gap of about 90%.
Regulatory pressure tightens
The report counts seventeen Central Bank of Nigeria actions in fourteen months across cyber, data protection, and anti-money laundering. Six of those carry hard deadlines between March 2026 and March 2028. A N15.42 billion fine on a leading commercial bank in 2025 signaled that non-compliance now threatens an institution’s international correspondent relationships, not only its balance sheet.
Forum brings enforcers and industry leaders together
AIG Uche Henry Ifeanyi, Assistant Inspector General of the Nigeria Police Force, delivered the keynote on financial crime enforcement. Three panels brought in leaders from NIBSS, the EFCC, the Nigeria Police Force Cybercrime Lab, Paystack, PAYAZA, ChamsSwitch, Utila, Seerbit, Hydrogen Payment Services, Novac Payments, Odua Investment, Fastspeed Technologies, Vertiv, Rack Centre, and Seequre.
The forum was convened with TechCabal as research and media partner, and in partnership with the Cyber Security Experts Association of Nigeria (CSEAN), the country’s leading body of cybersecurity professionals.
What the next eighteen months mean
Gbemisola Osunrinde, Group Managing Director of Smartcomply, which owns Adhere, said: “The fall in reported fraud is welcome, but it is also a warning. When reporting drops faster than fraud, the risk does not leave the system; it leaves the record. What this report shows is that the next eighteen months will be decided by architecture, not by tools. We built Adhere so that a bank or a fintech can meet the CBN's mandates and still see, transaction by transaction, what a quarterly review would miss.”
Adhere is trusted by more than 1,000 companies, is ISO 27001 certified, aligned to the Nigeria Data Protection Act, and is a Mastercard Engage partner.
What this means for Nigerian businesses and consumers: The report’s central argument is blunt. Institutions that survive the next eighteen months intact will not be those with the best AI tools but those with the right architecture around them: proactive detection, full customer risk context, model governance, and collaboration across institutions. For everyday Nigerians, the takeaway is that fraud is not disappearing, it is evolving. Stricter CBN deadlines and bigger fines mean banks and fintechs must invest in compliance or risk losing access to international partners, which could affect transaction speed and cost for customers.