Crypto Africa: Abuja seeks to ease VASP market entry
“We do not want to gag anyone.” Emomotimi Agama’s remark stands in contrast to the years when Nigeria maintained a far more confrontational relationship with crypto.
The shift was already visible when the Central Bank of Nigeria opened its regulatory sandbox to VASPs. The SEC now wants to make the path to registration much easier to understand.
Its FinTech and Innovation Hub, FinPort, notably distinguishes between the Regulatory Incubation Programme and the Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme, or ARIP. Companies can begin with an assessment, enter a controlled regulatory environment and then progress toward full registration.
The framework is already attracting participants. Busha and Quidax have been part of the ARIP programme since 2024. Luno, Koinkoin, Blockvault and several other companies were admitted in July 2026. Yellow Card, Pisi Payments and BC Access joined them in August.
The door is open.
But not without conditions.
Approval in principle is not a license
The SEC is now emphasizing this distinction. An Approval-in-Principle, or AIP, allows a company to operate within a supervised framework. It does not mean the regulator has granted final approval.
Janet Joseph, the SEC’s head of virtual asset and fintech supervision, explains that this phase is used to assess governance, available capital, technology controls and investor-protection mechanisms.
Applicants that fail often show the same weaknesses: an unclear business proposition, inadequate risk governance, insufficient capital or an incomplete compliance plan.
Abuja has also significantly raised the financial bar. Since January, the minimum capital requirement for a Digital Assets Exchange has been set at 2 billion naira, up from 500 million. The same requirement applies to a crypto custodian. A real-world asset tokenization platform must hold 1 billion naira.
BrefCrypto had already highlighted this new approach when the SEC proposed requiring custodians to keep at least 80% of their clients’ crypto assets offline.
The regulatory clarity promised by Agama therefore does not mean deregulation.
Put differently, the SEC wants to explain more clearly how companies can enter the market. It does not intend to lower the cost of entry.
Nigeria formalizes its crypto market
This regulatory acceleration comes as the market has become too significant to remain in a gray area.
The Investments and Securities Act of 2025 now explicitly gives the SEC the power to register and supervise virtual asset service providers, digital asset operators, exchanges and custodians. Platforms offering investment services in Nigeria must therefore operate within this framework.
The regulator also wants to step up its fight against fraud. At the October 7 meeting, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit said investment fraud accounted for roughly half of the cases it had examined. VASPs are therefore being pushed to strengthen customer verification, monitoring of cross-border transactions and the reporting of suspicious activity.
This oversight is becoming even more important as Nigeria’s crypto market, estimated at several tens of billions of dollars, enters a phase with much heavier tax and compliance requirements.
The shift is clear. Abuja no longer appears to be asking whether the crypto sector should be allowed to exist. It is now working out who can operate it legally, with how much capital and under what controls.
That does not guarantee the regulatory process will become fast. The financial requirements could even force some smaller companies out of the market.
Nevertheless, the SEC is sending a far clearer message than it did a few years ago: crypto can enter Nigeria’s financial system.
Provided it comes through the front door.
