A new wireless service is set to make banking in Nigeria cost effective and contactless courtesy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and telephone network operators in the country.
CBN says its new cloud Wi-Fi hotspot services will make e-payments in the country seamless and even slash the cost of e-payment by 30 percent in the country.
Chidi Umeano, CBN’s head of Shared Services, said the service will be driven by banks through the supervision of Central Bank and is set to make access to e-payment services by the bank’s clients in areas where over 60,000 activated Point of Sale (PoS) terminals are spread.
The new wireless service will be installed around PoS terminals to enable customers under the Wi-Fi coverage to make e-payment transactions.
According to Umeano, the service is ideal and less expensive as hotspots are more flexible than each user struggling for the same PoS terminal. He added that for transparency and customer safety, all cashless transactions will go through the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
Nigeria’s cashless policy was introduced by the CBN in line with the Vision 20:2020 requirements of reducing banking costs in the country, reducing the flow of cash and dwelling more on the e-transactions — an inclusive move for the country’s marginalized who cannot access formal banking services.
On the cashless policy, the CBN governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi expects the national payments system to be quickened up as a step in addressing the currency management hitches in the country.
Sanusi, in a memorial lecture last weekend at a function in Lagos, said the Nigerian banking sector was heavily cash-oriented promoting more operational costs hence resulting to exuberant service charges.
He added that more than 192 billion Naira by end of this year would be due to cash management.
Sanusi said the cashless policy would reduce the cash management costs from 90 percent of the customers. The policy, which came into effect on June 1 claims that cash withdrawals and deposits that exceed N 500,000 for individuals and N 3,000,000 million for the corporate sector, will carry a cash handling fee.
