The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) has authorised Upperlink Limited as the System Integrator on Nigeria’s national e-invoicing platform, even as the company will support businesses while Nigeria advances the phased implementation of mandatory electronic invoicing.
The authorisation will enable Upperlink to connect businesses and institutions to the NRS Merchant Buyer Solution (MBS) framework, support real-time invoice validation, secure transmission, and compliant digital tax reporting in line with the new national e-invoicing regime.
Managing Director of Upperlink, Mr. Olusegun Akano, said the company’s authorisation as a System Integrator reflects its long-standing strength in enterprise technology, digital infrastructure, and nationally scaled service delivery. He noted that the company has built a reputation as one of Nigeria’s premier indigenous technology firms.
‘’We have delivered secure, scalable, and easy-to-use platforms for business, government, financial services, and digital transformation initiatives. We are licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as a Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) and operate as an aggregator to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
“This underscores our depth in regulated payment infrastructure and transaction technology. We are the first ICANN-accredited registrar in Nigeria. This is our additional capability in digital infrastructure and cloud-related services’’, Mr. Akano explained.
He added that Upperlink has developed payments and enterprise solutions such as Upperlink Paygate, which aggregates payments across major card schemes, and account-to-account channels and robust treasury systems that support efficient financial control for large corporations and various state governments in Nigeria.
These capabilities reinforce the company’s readiness to support large-scale invoicing, reconciliation, and compliance workflows required under the NRS e-Invoicing regime.
Upperlink’s achievements cut across major public sector and social-impact programmes delivered at scale across Nigeria.
For instance, Mr. Akano explained that in the AGILE Project, which is a five-year Federal Government initiative supported by the World Bank, the company provided technical support to some States through a secure portal for beneficiary registration, digital identity capture, database creation, and payment management in partnership with Banks.
Furthermore, the Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Opeyemi Oni, shed light on the NRS’s Mandate. He said the NRS approval has strengthened Upperlink’s commitment to ‘‘helping Nigerian businesses comply seamlessly with the new e-Invoicing framework while reducing operational friction, improving transparency, and enabling trusted digital record keeping across the eco system’’.
This development comes at a critical time in Nigeria’s tax digitisation journey as the NRS confirmed a phased rollout of e-Invoicing across large, medium, and emerging taxpayers, with mandatory onboarding windows tied to annual turnover bands above N5 billion, between N1 billion and N5 billion, and below N1 billion.
Businesses are expected to integrate their invoicing or accounting processes with the NRS-approved framework and ensure real-time issuance, validation, and submission of invoices through authorised channels from their go-live dates.
As a System Integrator, Upperlink would design, deploy, integrate, and support invoicing compliant systems for organisations ‘’that need to connect with the national e-Invoicing infrastructure. This includes support for businesses with existing enterprise systems as well as organisations that require middleware or portal-based solutions to meet the new compliance obligations. With the NRS authorisation, Upperlink is positioned to work with corporates, institutions, financial service providers, and public-sector organisations seeking reliable integration support as Nigeria expands the scope of mandatory e-Invoicing nationwide’’, Oni said.
