Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) reports have specified that Nigeria’s electronic payment (e-payment) services hit a record N56.85 trillion transactions from January to September 2018. As cited on the News Agency of Nigeria, it indicated an upsurge of N16.4 trillion when compared to the N40.45 trillion that was recorded in the corresponding period of 2017.
All these electronic transactions were mostly carried out via NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP), Point of Sale (PoS), Automated Transfer Machines (ATMs), Mobile Money, Electronic Bills Payment (E-Bills) and Web payments.
Analysis disclosed that ATM transactions sprouted from N4.61 trillion in 2017 to N4.76 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2018. The number of transactions on ATMs under the period in review grew from 560.86 million in 2017, to 650.06 million in 2018.
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A rise of almost N635 billion in the use of POS machines to carry out payments by Nigerians was also witnessed while 98.73 million transactions worth N975 billion were carried out using the same POS in 2017, and in 2018, the volume grew to 196.83 million, valued at N1.61 trillion.
Mobile money consumers rose from 2017 N795.18 billion to N1.22 trillion as at Sept 2018.
Dr Patricia Auta, a Financial analyst believes that the report signifies the high level of awareness and use of technology by individuals and businesses in the West Africa country.
She advised Nigeria Central Bank to deepen efforts on a cashless economy to further grow the electronic payment space and banks should drive growth by providing innovative alternative payment channels to users.
On a final note, the web payment channel packed the total value of N183.07 billion transaction in 2018 against the N129.24 billion in 2017. This means that the value of such transactions on e-bill payments declined from N420.73 billion in 2017 to N370 billion in 2018.