The Central Bank of Nigeria, or CBN, is now accepting applications from stablecoin providers, wallet operators, custodians and payment infrastructure firms for the second cohort of its regulatory sandbox. Successful applicants will be able to test products with real users inside boundaries agreed with the supervisor.

That is a concrete shift: stablecoins are no longer being considered solely from outside Nigeria’s banking perimeter. But a sandbox is neither a licence nor a blanket authorization to take a product to market. It is a controlled proving ground whose results have yet to be produced.

What the CBN actually opened

The CBN’s official sandbox page sets out two tracks for Cohort 2. One is for virtual asset service providers, or VASPs. The other covers data-enabled financial services such as open banking, payment initiation, fraud detection and credit decisioning.

The VASP track expressly includes fiat-backed stablecoin payments, issuance models, virtual-asset payments, wallets, custody, token-based products, fiat on- and off-ramps, and exchanges involving stablecoins and payment tokens. The CBN has not named any stablecoin, blockchain network or selected participant.

CBN-licensed institutions, firms overseen by other financial regulators, regulated foreign institutions, VASPs and unlicensed technology startups may apply, provided their products are sufficiently mature for controlled live testing. TechCabal and Punch report that applications run from August 12 to August 31, 2026.

Those reports rely heavily on the central bank’s statement. They corroborate the announced dates and scope, but they are not independent evidence that testing has begun or succeeded. At publication time, the CBN says applications are open; it has not published a list of admitted firms, an individual test plan or any results.

Live testing inside a narrow perimeter

“Sandbox” can sound like a technical demo. The CBN instead describes testing with real users. Each admitted firm must remain within agreed limits covering user categories, transaction volumes, customer exposure and test duration.

Applicants must show that their products are ready, their inherent risks have been assessed and anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and counter-proliferation controls are in place. The framework also calls for consumer safeguards, cybersecurity, business continuity, complaint handling, incident reporting and an orderly wind-down.

The key qualification appears on the CBN page itself: admission is not a permanent licence and does not authorize activity outside the approved test parameters. A firm could therefore test a stablecoin payment with live users without gaining the right to offer it across the Nigerian market afterwards.

GatherHub’s Stablecoins course explains why oversight must extend beyond the token. The issuer, reserve assets, redemption claim, liquidity and distribution intermediaries all matter. The sandbox will need to convert those general questions into measurable conditions for each product.

Two supervisors for two kinds of activity

The opening is part of a broader regulatory reorganization. A presidential order published on July 18 created a Virtual Asset Council chaired by the CBN, with the Nigeria Revenue Service and Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, as vice-chairs.

The order does not create a single regulator or transfer existing powers. Responsibility follows function: the SEC retains activities that behave like securities, while the CBN covers payments, settlement, custody and services involving non-security virtual assets. The Council is meant to resolve cases where that boundary is unclear.

That distinction matters for token-based products. A stablecoin used for settlement may fall under the CBN, while a token promising economic rights over an asset may fall within the SEC’s remit. A model combining both functions could require more than one approval.

The SEC already operates a separate framework. Its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Program covers digital investment providers and tokenized-product platforms, among others. On July 3, the SEC announced two further VASP admissions under conditional approvals in principle — again, not final licences.

GatherHub’s inference is that the most important change is not the existence of another sandbox. It is the attempt to separate and then coordinate payment, monetary, custody and investment risks instead of treating every digital asset as one regulatory category.

Why it matters now

Nigeria is a significant testing ground. Chainalysis estimates that the country received more than $92.1 billion in onchain value between July 2024 and June 2025, the highest figure in Sub-Saharan Africa under its methodology. That is a blockchain-analytics estimate, not an official payment total, and it is not all attributable to stablecoins.

The same report observes recurring multi-million-dollar stablecoin transfers tied to trade between Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It also links adoption to demand for foreign currency, cross-border payments and inflation. Those findings explain supervisory interest, but they do not prove that any particular stablecoin protects users or lowers payment costs.

For issuers and wallet operators, the sandbox may clarify expectations before a broader launch. Banks and payment providers can use it to assess connections to digital rails. For users, the questions are more direct: who holds the funds, at what price can the token be redeemed, who can freeze an address, and what remedy exists after an error or insolvency?

What the sandbox still has to prove

The programme does not yet publish common quantitative success criteria. It is unclear how many firms will be selected, what volumes may be processed, how many users can participate or when the first tests will start. The official page also does not promise that detailed results will be made public.

For a fiat-backed stablecoin, four forms of evidence will be essential: the composition and segregation of reserves, redemption at the stated value, liquidity between the token and local currency, and handling of a network outage or freeze. Wallets and custodians must additionally prove key management, recovery, fraud liability and data protection.

The sandbox does not automatically remove foreign-exchange risk. A dollar token may speed up a transfer while leaving a Nigerian user exposed to the cost of converting into naira. Nor does a successful test with a small group prove that a product remains safe at national scale.

The CBN’s first sandbox cohort also produced little public evidence. TechCabal notes that admissions, testing and outcomes largely disappeared from view. That history makes transparency in Cohort 2 as important as the decision to admit stablecoin businesses.

What to watch

The first milestone is the August 31 application deadline. The next checks are the participant list, selected products, limits placed on each test and the date on which live-user trials begin.

Useful metrics would include volumes, user counts, incidents, complaints, settlement times, redemption deviations and continuity-test results. Published reasons for graduating a firm towards licensing, extending a test, changing it or stopping it would show whether the sandbox truly produces evidence-based policy.

The CBN has opened a regulatory door to stablecoins. It has not granted broad market access. The programme’s value will be measured by what comes out of the test perimeter: verifiable rules, public results and products capable of protecting users beyond a limited pilot.

Sources consulted

Editorial illustration generated by GatherHub Editorial under the “Portail Matière” identity. This article is not financial advice.