The Central Bank of Nigeria is making it cheaper to send small amounts of money. But if you are sending ₦10,000 or more, the bill is actually going up and the reason has nothing to do with your bank.

Under a draft Guide to Charges dated April 21, 2026, the CBN has proposed eliminating transfer fees on transactions below ₦5,000 entirely, capping inter-bank transfers between ₦5,000 and ₦50,000 at ₦10, and keeping fees on transfers above ₦50,000 capped at ₦50.

On paper, that reads as a win for everyday users. In practice, the full picture is more complicated and understanding it requires knowing what stamp duty is and what Nigeria just brought back.

These changes mark one of the most significant pricing shifts in Nigeria's payments space in six years. In 2024, electronic payments in Nigeria crossed the ₦1 quadrillion mark, a number that reflects how deeply digital transactions have embedded themselves into everyday financial life.

The CBN's new directive is designed to keep that momentum going, particularly for small businesses and low-value, high-frequency users. According to Moniepoint's 2025 Informal Economy Report, only one in four informal businesses reported that digital payments accounted for at least 10% of their total revenue in 2025, a figure the regulator clearly wants to move.

The Stamp Duty Shift That Changes Everything Above ₦10,000

Five years ago, Nigeria replaced stamp duty with the Electronic Money Transfer Levy (EMTL), a flat ₦50 charge on electronic transfers of ₦10,000 and above, deducted from the receiver.

In 2026, Nigeria brought stamp duty back. The levy is the same ₦50. But who pays it has changed: the charge now falls on the sender, not the receiver.

That shift is where the real cost story lives. Under the old rules, sending ₦10,000 cost the sender ₦25 in bank fees, the stamp duty was quietly deducted from what the receiver got.

Under the new rules, the bank fee on that same transfer drops to ₦10, but the ₦50 stamp duty now sits on top of it, payable by the sender. The total sender cost moves from ₦25 to ₦60.

For transfers above ₦50,000, the calculation is even more visible. The bank fee stays at ₦50, and the ₦50 stamp duty is now added on top, bringing the total sender cost to ₦100.

In 2025, that same transfer cost the sender ₦50 in bank fees, with the ₦50 levy silently taken from the receiver's end. The government levy is now five times the size of the actual bank fee on mid-range transactions. That ratio tells you where the real cost pressure is coming from.

For the government, the numbers remain attractive regardless of the structural shift. Stamp duty collections reached ₦392.78 billion in the first eleven months of 2025, a figure that will only grow as more Nigerians move transactions onto digital channels.

Eight of Nigeria's largest banks earned ₦514.82 billion from electronic payments in the first nine months of 2025 alone, a pool the new fee structure will begin to reshape.

What Changes for PoS Withdrawals and Who This Actually Benefits

Beyond transfer fees, the new guide introduces a structured fee regime for Point of Sale (PoS) withdrawals, an area that has operated largely on informal pricing for years. On-us withdrawals, where you use your own bank or fintech's agent to access cash, will now cost ₦100 per ₦20,000 withdrawn. Not-on-us withdrawals, using a different institution's agent, will cost the same ₦100 per ₦20,000, plus an additional agent-determined fee that must be disclosed upfront.

For context: PoS terminals currently charge as much as ₦100 per ₦5,000 in some locations, four times the new structured rate. In the first quarter of 2025, PoS terminals moved ₦116.79 billion per day. The scale of that activity makes clearer pricing a meaningful consumer protection, not a minor administrative update.

For businesses, particularly the small operators who process dozens of transactions daily, the merchant service charge cap of 0.5% per transaction, with a maximum of ₦10,000, removes the cost burden of card acceptance that previously fell on customers at the point of sale.

That is a structural shift worth paying attention to, especially for traders in markets, logistics operators, and service providers who have historically discouraged card payments because of what it cost them.

The CBN's new guide is genuinely trying to lower the cost of cashless transactions for small and frequent users.

But for anyone sending ₦10,000 or more, the stamp duty shift means the total cost of transferring money is going up and the government, not the bank, is collecting most of that difference. That is the part of the headline worth reading twice.