The Nigeria Inter–Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has announced that more transactions were made last month via point of sale (PoS) terminals across the country. Specifically, it said the value of transactions in July alone via PoS merchants across the country rose to almost NGN59 billion representing an increase of NGN4 billion.
Furthermore, the number of transactions increased by 500,000. In June, 4.5 million transactions were made via PoS while in July, 5 million transactions were made. These volumes, NiBSS said, were recorded from over 62,000 active terminals out of 121,785 deployed PoS terminal.
Reacting to this development, Mrs. Regha Onajite, chief executive officer, Electronic Payment Providers Association of Nigeria (EPPAN) said that a lot of people have not really embraced the PoS but, that is not a challenge.
She said that “The PoS is only a channel for electronic payment. We have so many other channels like the MPoS, mobile, ATMS, web/online, instant payments etc. so the PoS is one of many other choices.”
“The CBN and the operators should focus on awareness creation for further adoption. During the early days of the Cashless initiative, E-PPAN under the aegis of the CBN and the support of the financial institutions had massive awareness campaign especially below the line campaign in addition to what the banks, the central bank and other providers were doing with above the line campaign to promote the understanding and adoption of electronic payments channels. This I will say has to be sustained.”
“We are talking here about a change in culture, a shift in behaviour, it can’t be done overnight. Advocacy for change must be sustained. The message must continuously be in the face of the people. Now sensitization and mobilization should be supported by deliberate policies from the government. In my opinion, the Central Bank should implement the cash limitation policies across the entire nation. This should be supported by a reward and punishment system. The fact that it succeded in 6 states of the federation shows that it will succeed everywhere in Nigeria.”
On how to increase transactions over the terminal, Tunde Ogungbade, managing director, Global Accelerex, urged for the establishment of proper management and monitoring metrics and analytics for PoS assets.
“Merchants today have too many PoS assets. An exclusive contract for merchant acquiring does not mean your merchant cannot have other banking relationships. Contract terms may be short e.g. 1 year. But this will help a merchant acquiring business properly evaluate the opportunity of the merchants’ business based on transaction forecast of volume and value over a reasonable period.”
