Banknote scarcity pushes e-payment to N39.58tn with 40% increase in POS
By Felicia Nwosu
The recent revelation by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has indicated that the naira scarcity, caused by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) redesign and cash withdrawal policy, has pushed Point of Sales transactions to N807.16bn in January 2023 alone.
This includes a 40.69 per cent year-on-year increase from the N573.72bn transactions that were done in January 2022. Total cashless transactions in Nigeria rose by 45.41 per cent y-o-y to N39.58tn in January 2023.
According to NIBSS Instant Payment System and Point of Sales terminals report, the total NIP transactions for the period rose by 45.52 per cent y-o-y from N26.65 tn as of January 2022 to N38.77tn as of January 2023.
The use of electronic channels for transactions grew by 45.50 per cent y-o-y from 438.48 million times to 638 million times in the period under review.
Recall that in 2022, the CBN announced a Naira redesign policy, and withdrawal limits, and encouraged Nigerians to adopt electronic forms of transactions and customers to leverage alternative channels such as Internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, cards/POS, eNaira, etc. to conduct their banking transactions.
This no doubt has forced them to tilt to the use of electronic transactions which has subjected them to long ATM queues, buying of the naira, failed transactions, and problems with banks’ mobile applications.
Commenting on the development, Victor Olojo, National President of the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria, Victor Olojo, said, “The cashless issue forced people to move to digital, to PoS. The policy contributed to that growth. People had to seek alternative channels aside from cash so this is expected. But this is not all from PoS withdrawals; we have merchants, businesses, and supermarkets. All other sectors using PoS to transact contributed to it.”
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