For a Nigerian business paying an overseas supplier, a fast token transfer solves only one part of the transaction. The business still needs a dependable price when entering the token, a recipient able to use the proceeds and a clear answer about who is responsible if the payment stalls. That is the commercial test behind growing institutional interest in stablecoin services.
The PUNCH’s November 3 report attributes that interest to Quidax chief executive Buchi Okoro, who said banks, asset managers and fintech companies were considering services for customers. This is a statement from an infrastructure supplier with a commercial interest in the market. It is not evidence that a named bank has launched a product, signed a contract or earned revenue from it.
The product begins and ends outside the blockchain
A useful way to evaluate the opportunity is to follow the payment end to end: naira enters an account, value is converted into a token, the token moves and the recipient converts or spends it. These are different services even when one application hides the boundaries. A cheap network transfer cannot establish the total cost if conversion spreads or the final withdrawal are expensive.
The IMF’s June 2026 analysis describes households and smaller firms using dollar-linked tokens for cross-border payments and access to foreign-currency value. It connects demand partly to naira depreciation, inflation and constrained foreign-exchange access in 2023–2024. That is evidence of a payment problem customers have tried to solve, rather than proof that every proposed institutional service will be profitable.
The distinction also protects the interpretation of market size. The IMF’s approximately $59 billion figure covers crypto-asset inflows in July 2023–June 2024. It is neither a current stablecoin deposit balance nor the revenue available to a bank. Transaction value can pass through a service at a small fee, and the same capital can be transferred more than once. A large flow cannot be valued as if it were a high-margin recurring income stream.
A banking relationship does not authorize every activity
The CBN’s December 2023 guidelines established designated banking and settlement relationships for virtual-asset service providers while retaining restrictions on banks holding or trading virtual currencies on their own account. The document therefore distinguished facilitating a customer-facing ecosystem from taking proprietary token exposure. It should be read with its date and scope intact.
The regulatory landscape subsequently developed. The presidency’s July 2026 announcement describes an executive order coordinating agencies while preserving their statutory mandates. It assigns registration according to the activity and asset: securities activities to the SEC, and payment, settlement, custody and related non-security virtual-asset services to the CBN. The announcement does not grant blanket permission to every institution expressing interest.
Commercially, that means the role has to be specified before its economics can be assessed. An institution providing settlement accounts has different obligations and potential income from an exchange, a custodian or an issuer. A familiar banking brand on the application does not, by itself, explain which legal entity owes redemption or which approval covers the particular service.
Conditional admission leaves commercial questions open
The SEC’s August statement on additional ARIP participants explicitly says approval in principle is not a final licence. It permits activity within the programme’s defined scope and remains conditional on continued compliance. That primary document is a stronger guide to the meaning of admission than promotional descriptions suggesting unrestricted approval.
Nairametrics reported on October 29 that the SEC said no operator had obtained final registration under ARIP at that point. The dated statement should not be expanded into a claim about every possible regulatory pathway, or assumed to establish the status of every operator today. Its relevance is narrower: conditional participation and a final operating permission are different milestones.
Those conditions affect the investment case. Reporting, customer verification, monitoring and operational controls consume resources before a service reaches scale. Partnering can distribute those tasks, but it also introduces dependencies. The potential fee pool must be assessed after the institution’s actual responsibilities and the partner’s permitted activities are clear.
The customer needs a usable exit as well as a fast transfer
The favorable case is substantial: established distribution could make an existing payment workaround easier to use and more transparent. Institutions might offer clearer pricing and support while customers gain a faster cross-border route. Those are plausible benefits, not measured outcomes from the reported expressions of interest.
The deciding evidence would be a named, authorized service with published conversion terms, usable redemption arrangements and observed settlement performance. Repeat customers and revenue after compliance and support costs would then reveal whether the route adds durable economic value. Until those details exist, the useful distinction is between demand for a better payment and proof that a particular institution can deliver it dependably.