What If Nigerian Banks Stopped Thinking Like Banks?

For as long as banking has existed in Nigeria, it has followed a predictable cycle. A new technology emerges, and banks either ignore it, resist it, or reluctantly adopt it. Meanwhile, fintech startups push the limits of what’s possible, until eventually, regulation or market forces force the banks to catch up.

But what if that cycle were broken?

Sterling Bank, a mid-sized Nigerian bank that has historically played in the shadows of bigger players, is doing something unusual. Instead of waiting to be disrupted, it’s deciding to disrupt itself. Instead of licensing foreign technology, it’s building its own. Instead of competing with fintechs, it’s collaborating with them.

And in doing so, it’s raising a much bigger question: What should a Nigerian bank actually be?

Building Instead of Buying

Most banks don’t build their own technology. They buy it.

This makes sense if your main goal is stability. The financial industry runs on risk management, and the easiest way to de-risk technology is to use whatever is already proven. That’s why most Nigerian banks run on software designed decades ago in the U.S. or Europe. It’s not perfect, but it works.

The problem is, these systems weren’t built for Nigerian customers. They weren’t designed for the scale, volatility, and unique challenges of an emerging market. And they certainly weren’t designed for an era where a phone is the primary banking tool for millions of people.

Sterling Bank saw this and decided to do something radical: they built their own core banking system—SEABAAS.

This is the kind of decision that seems obvious in hindsight but almost never happens in practice. Banks don’t like reinventing the wheel. The risks are too high, the costs too unpredictable. But Sterling took the bet anyway.

One executive in the documentary The Future of Banking: A Sterling Evolution puts it bluntly:

"Every time we bought foreign banking software, it lacked something. It wasn’t built for our customers. So we asked: Why not build something that actually works for us?"

This is the kind of thinking that separates companies that adapt from companies that lead.

The Myth of "Bank vs. Fintech"

In recent years, the narrative in Nigeria has been that fintechs will eventually replace banks.

And on the surface, this makes sense. Fintechs are more agile, more customer-focused, and less burdened by legacy infrastructure. If you compare a traditional bank to a fintech startup, the fintech will almost always seem faster and more innovative.

But what happens when a bank starts thinking like a fintech?

Sterling’s approach flips the usual script. Instead of seeing fintechs as a threat, they see them as partners. They provide funding, infrastructure, and even a place to test new ideas. In the documentary, Deji Olowe, a director at Peerless talks about how Sterling is the first stop for Fintechs when they want to try something new.

"If you’re a fintech in Nigeria and you want to build something new, you go to Sterling first." He says.

This is an important shift. It means that instead of banks trying to beat fintechs at their own game, they’re setting the rules of the game itself.

The interesting thing is that this kind of collaboration doesn’t just benefit Sterling—it benefits the entire fintech ecosystem. A strong bank-fintech partnership means startups can scale faster, customers get better products, and the industry as a whole evolves more quickly.

But it also raises a bigger question: If a traditional bank can behave like a fintech, what happens to the fintechs that were supposed to replace them?

A Play for Financial Independence

Beyond the technology and the fintech partnerships, there’s an even deeper shift happening.

For decades, Nigerian banks have been dependent on foreign technology. Every year, millions of dollars leave the country just to pay for banking infrastructure.

Sterling is making a different bet: that Nigerian banking should be built on Nigerian technology.

This isn’t just about saving money. It’s about control. A country that doesn’t own its financial infrastructure is always vulnerable—vulnerable to changing regulations, to external disruptions, to geopolitical shifts that have nothing to do with its own economy.

As one executive in the documentary put it:

"Warfare is not just when people throw bombs around. If there are political differences between our country, between Africa and the West, they can easily cut off supply. We like to be ahead of the curve."

If this mindset spreads, it could transform not just banking but the entire Nigerian tech industry. It could mean more investment in local developers, more opportunities for fintech startups, and a shift from being technology consumers to technology creators.

What Happens Next?

Right now, Sterling is an outlier. Most Nigerian banks still follow the old playbook: buy foreign tech, compete with fintechs, and assume that market dominance will last forever.

But what happens if Sterling’s experiment works?

What if other banks start following the same path? What if the biggest innovations in African banking stop coming from fintech startups and start coming from the banks themselves?

And what if, five years from now, Nigeria isn’t just a fast-growing market for banking technology—but the place where the world’s best banking technology is built?

That’s the real question. And the answer will define the future of banking in Nigeria.

Watch the Documentary?