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NELFUND Pilots Tokenised Payment System to Prevent Double Payments

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has commenced a pilot of a tokenised payment system aimed at preventing double payment of school fees by beneficiaries and reducing complications associated with refunds.

This was disclosed on Wednesday, 28th October, 2026 during a press briefing by NELFUND Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, where he revealed that under the ongoing process, the fund has received close to 400,000 applications.

According to Sawyerr, the proposed system, known as a tokenised payment system, is intended to enable students to authorize payment directly to their institutions through tokens linked to their respective schools, rather than having the approved tuition fees transferred to their personal bank accounts.

The initiative, according to Sawyerr, was introduced to address cases in which students, unaware that NELFUND had already paid their fees, made duplicate payments to meet institutional deadlines.

He further illustrated this challenge with an example of a student, unaware of a payment made by the fund to an institution on Monday, went ahead to settle the fee independently on Wednesday, before discovering the earlier transaction on Friday.

Describing such incident as genuine errors, he said the new arrangement was intended to eliminate the need for refunds by allowing students to initiate payments themselves.

According to Sawyerr, the beneficiaries would receive notifications when their approved fees are ready for payment and could then authorize the transfer through an application on their phones.

The Managing Director stressed that the system would not give students direct access to the funds, but would allow them to control when payments were initiated while restricting the destination of the money to the institution for which it was approved.

“We are not giving the students money, but we are giving them power,” he said.

While clarifying that the token would be linked to a specific institution, the fund’s Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal further stated that the token would not function as a personal or mobile money wallet.

“It’s not a personal wallet, it’s not a mobile money wallet at all,” Iyal said, adding that the funds could neither be transferred to students’ personal accounts nor redirected to other institutions.

He confirmed that the pilot phase has commenced, with close to 400,000 applications received at the time of the briefing. However, the officials did not announce a date for the system’s full implementation.