The volume of daily electronic transactions in Nigeria has reached 40 billion naira (US$254 million), the highest ever in the country, according to the Nigerian Inter Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
According to NIBSS, the increase shows more Nigerians are adopting the on-going cashless policy embarked upon by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“As a result of the growing awareness of the cashless policy, transactions recorded by the Nigerian Inter Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) under its NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) and Nigerian Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) have increased significantly to about N40 billion daily”, NIBSS said.
NIBSS also revealed there has been huge volume and value in transactions carried out via cheques, Point of Sale (PoS) and ATMs.
Chidi Umeano, CBN’s Head of Shared Services, said the implementation of the policy did not go smoothly at the outset when it encountered several challenges with alternative channels.
He however added that the bank has been able to overcome this and several other challenges resulting in the policy’s huge success.
Umeano said: “Banks have continued to roll out more innovative electronic payment platforms to meet customers’ expectations. The cashless policy has been very successful in Lagos considering when we started and how far we have gone in terms of PoS deployment.
“When we started the cashless Lagos, we had less than 10,000 PoS in Lagos, but currently we have over 150,000 PoS machines in the state alone.”
