Almost 500 banking halls have shut in three years as Point of Sale agents are quietly doing the job banks used to do.
If you’ve noticed fewer banks around lately, you’re not imagining it. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data shows Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), the commercial banks Nigerians use every day for salaries, savings and transfers, have been steadily shutting branches and cash centres since 2022.
In their place, Point of Sale (POS) agents stationed on street corners, inside shops and under umbrellas now handle deposits, withdrawals, transfers and bill payments for millions of people who used to walk into a banking hall for the same thing.
This is a slow, deliberate retreat that has been building for years, and the pace has picked up sharply in the last two.
Key takeaways on Nigeria’s declining bank footprint between 2022 and 2025:
• Net Closures: Nigeria’s banks closed a net total of 476 physical locations (branches and bulk cash handling centres).
• Footprint Shrinkage: The national network dropped 8.8%, falling from 5,410 total locations in 2022 to 4,934 in 2025.
• Sharp Acceleration: Over 75% of the total closures recorded across the entire 11-year period (592 locations lost between 2014 and 2025) occurred within these last three years alone.
The decline moved in stages.
• Gradual Start (2023): The network experienced minor routine adjustments, dipping slightly to 5,373 locations.
• Massive Drop (2024–2025): The decline accelerated rapidly, losing 229 locations in 2024 (down to 5,144) and another 210 in 2025, accounting for ~92% of the total three-year reduction.
• Strategic Shift, Not Failure: The footprint shrank even as active licensed banks in Nigeria grew from 33 to 35, showing expanding banks deliberately chose to trim physical branches rather than fail.
• Catalyst Event: The sharp drop coincided directly with a national cash scarcity crisis, forcing millions of Nigerians away from traditional banking halls and toward POS agents.
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The closures did not hit every part of the country equally. Ebonyi recorded the sharpest single-year drop anywhere in Nigeria, collapsing from 120 branches in 2023 to just 31 in 2024, a loss of 89 locations in twelve months.
Over the full 2022 to 2025 period, Ekiti’s branch count fell from 107 to 57, down nearly 47 per cent, while Enugu lost 44 locations and Oyo lost 41.
By 2025, the picture in the north east and parts of the north west had become especially thin. Yobe had only 23 banking locations left in the entire state, Taraba had 26, and Zamfara had 28.
For context, that’s fewer branches serving an entire state than some single Lagos neighbourhoods have on their own.
Lagos Still Wins, But It’s Losing Too
Lagos remains Nigeria’s undisputed banking capital, holding 1,444 branches and cash centres in 2025, close to 29 per cent of every physical banking location left in the country and more than five times what any other state has.
But even Lagos wasn’t spared. It lost 158 locations between 2022 and 2025, and the Federal Capital Territory dropped from 400 branches to 362 over the same stretch, proof that this shift reached major commercial centres, not just rural areas.
Interestingly, not every state followed the downward trend as Delta grew from 173 to 196 branches, Edo rose from 155 to 165, and Jigawa and Kogi also posted modest gains.
That split suggests banks are consolidating, pulling out of thinner markets while still investing in states with growing populations or commercial demand.
So Where Did Everyone Go?
People switched straight to POS machines, but the two numbers usually thrown around, transaction value and transaction volume, aren’t measuring the same thing:
• Volume = how many transactions happened (the number of taps, swipes or transfers), regardless of size
• Value = the total naira amount that moved through all those transactions combined
Volume and value don’t always align as overall electronic transactions sometimes drop in volume while surging in value due to larger individual payments.
• POS Growth (Q1 2026): Transaction value jumped 79% year-on-year to ₦18.78 trillion (₦208.7bn/day), up from ₦10.49tn in Q1 2025.
• POS vs. ATM (2023–2024): POS volume grew 33% (9.85bn to 13.08bn) and value more than doubled (₦110.35tn to ₦223.27tn). ATM growth stalled, with volume flat (1.01bn to 1.02bn) and value edging up slightly (₦28.21tn to ₦29.12tn).
This divergence highlights POS agents as the primary choice for daily financial transactions in Nigeria.
Late 2024 made a bad situation worse. Naira scarcity left ATMs empty for weeks at a stretch, and with banking halls also thinning out, many POS agents saw an opening.
Some POS operators doubled their fees, charging up to ₦1,000 to withdraw just ₦5,000. People paid these high fees anyway simply because they had no other choice close by.
The CBN eventually stepped in, fining nine banks a combined N1.35 billion, debiting N150 million from each of their accounts, for failing to keep cash available to customers despite repeated warnings.
By the time the shortage eased, the habit had already formed. POS agents had shifted from being an emergency backup to being the default way most Nigerians access their own money.
As POS agents became central to everyday banking, strict new regulations kicked in across 2026:
• CAC Registration: A January 1, 2026 deadline required all operators to register with the Corporate Affairs Commission or face business closure and terminal seizures.
• Single-Provider Rule: Under updated CBN guidelines, agents have been required to operate with only one bank or provider since April 1, 2026, banning multi-terminal setups.
• Location Restrictions: Effective August 1, 2026, the CBN enforced geo-fencing to lock agents to a fixed registered location, expanding the allowed operating radius from 10m to 70m after industry pushback.
The exclusivity rule and mounting regulatory scrutiny are actively reshaping the POS market:
• Market Consolidation: New CBN rules force POS agents to use only one provider instead of keeping backup terminals. As a result, agents are dropping unreliable networks and moving to platforms like OPay, PalmPay, and Moniepoint.
• Business Strain: Smaller fintechs and thin-margin operators who relied on multi-terminal setups risk being squeezed out of the market entirely.
• EFCC Crackdown: Citing POS networks as conduits for money laundering and ransom payments, the EFCC recently demanded that agent associations build strict tracking frameworks.
• The Shift: POS agents have successfully replaced the local bank branch, but they are now the primary target of intense regulatory oversight.
Nigeria didn’t plan to replace its banking halls with roadside agents. It happened because branches got expensive to run, cash grew scarce at the worst possible time, and POS was faster, cheaper and closer to home than the alternative.
Now regulators are racing to write rules for a system that grew far ahead of them, and the outcome will decide whether millions of Nigerians in underserved states get more reliable access to their money, or less.
If your neighbourhood bank branch shut down this year, or if you now do all your banking through a POS agent, tell us in the comments how that shift has actually felt for you.
