¶ Getting started
Federal Inland Revenue Service Merchant Buyer Solution (FIRSMBS) is a government initiative under the FIRS Digitial Transformation Strategy (2023/24) that shall be used by all Value Added Tax (VAT) registered taxpayers’ businesses to manage the issuance of e-invoices in accordance with Section 25, Part 5 of the Tax Administration and Enforcement Act 2007.
FIRSMBS for your business, start with a clear implementation plan that includes:
- Assessment of Needs: Evaluate your current invoicing processes and identify how FIRSMBS can address your specific challenges.
- Integration Planning: Work with the FIRSMBS team to plan the integration with your existing financial and CRM systems.
- Training and Support: Utilize FIRSMBS's training resources to ensure your team is proficient in using the platform. Take advantage of local support for any queries or issues.
- Compliance Check: Ensure your invoicing practices align with FIRS regulations, leveraging FIRSMBS's compliance features.
FIRSMBS is more than just an e-invoicing solution; it's a strategic tool designed to empower Nigerian firms to navigate the complexities of the local business environment efficiently. By adopting FIRSMBS, businesses can enjoy streamlined processes, improved financial management, and enhanced competitiveness both locally and in the global market.
¶ Onboarding
- Sign up to access the tools you need for building and embedding FIRSMBS into your ERP.
- Dive into App Builder to build your FIRSMBS app in a few clicks.
- Understand the different FIRSMBS flows that you can create for your buyers.
- Check out the available options to embed your app.
- Learn about the different properties you can use to customize the FIRSMBS programmatically.
- Understand how your users interact with your app through callback events.
¶ Sign up with your TIN
As a first step, you need to register as business with a TIN no issued by FIRS. The TIN is a toolbox that enables you to manage your account, your apps, and your customers. It is where you can find your API keys, and also where you can get insights into all the data that flows between your app, the FIRSMBS APIs, your customers, and their banks.
The dashboard requires verification for the email you register - make sure that you confirm your email address.
¶ Complete compliance
After you’ve verified your email address, you can start signing up your business via the FIRSMBS Dashboard. This compliance process has 4 steps:
Company info: provide your company name, its RC number, and select the country of registration. The dashboard verifies your RC number before you can continue.
Registration documents: upload your company’s CAC certificate, and a proof of your company status on the CAC platform.
Business profile: select your industry, provide your business’s name, and write a short summary about what your business does. Creating this business profile helps FIRSMBS provide more accurate support in case you need help.
SLA: the last step is to accept FIRSMBS Service Level Agreement. You can request a copy of this agreement to your email address. Once you agree to the terms, you can launch the dashboard and start building.
It requires some additional verification before you can enable it in your integration.
¶ Connect with TaxProMax
Use the dashboard to directly manage your wallet. Through the dashboard, you can:
- Check your wallet’s credit balance
- Top up your wallet via secure card payments
- Set up automatic top-ups to ensure uninterrupted service for your applications
- Set up notifications to keep you informed about your credit balance
You can also interact with your wallet programmatically. Visit the API reference for more details.
¶ Start building
As soon as your onboarding is done, you can start using FIRSMBS by building your first App.
The FIRSMBS is a gateway for your users where they can link their bank accounts with FIRSMBS in your product, website, or application. This connection enables you to leverage FIRSMBS API and retrieve up-to-date information in real time, and in a secure manner.
¶ Final steps
When you have tested your App in the sandbox environment and want to go live with your product, get in touch with the FIRSMBS team
The Sales team makes sure that you finished your onboarding and that your business needs are satisfied. The team then connects you with an FIRSMBS engineer who verifies that your integration is running optimally. FIRS recommends that you take a look at the integration best practices before you switch to production.
Once your integration is verified, you need to:
- Execute Order form and set up a settlement account.
- Switch API keys from sandbox to production in your app.
- Switch the callback URL from sandbox to production.
- Define a production URL for your webhooks. Visit the Webhooks guide for more details.
- Set the base URL of your application's requests to the production environment.
- FIRSMBS recommends that you only launch your product to a subset of your users. This can help you fine-tune the Payments operation before scaling up to a larger user base.
¶ Best practices
This section describes some of the key concepts and best practices that you can adopt for a smooth integration experience.
- Understand how authentication works.
- Understand the different API environments.
- Use webhooks.
- Use callbacks.
- Understand the difference between webhooks and callbacks.
- Handle API responses appropriately.
- Be prepared for non-breaking changes.
¶ Need help?
- If you have any questions about FIRSMBS products or way of working, get in touch with the Support team.
- If you have technical questions or need help with your code, join FIRSMBS Developer Community on Slack.
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