Cashless policy: PoS transactions hit N127bn in 11 months

Nigeria’s cashless policy initiative recorded impressive patronage in the banking industry as recent statistics show that transactions on Point of Sale terminals (PoS) in 7.4 million accounts hit a whopping N127 billion between January and November in 2013.

During the period, the number of terminals registered with National Central Switch (NCS) being operated by Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the Payments Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) for the industry, stood at 157,000 while connected devices were 110,000.

The report, however, observed a reduction in the number of deployed terminals from 150,000 in August this year to 110,000 due to a harmonisation exercise embarked upon by banks and Payments Terminal Service Providers (PTSP).
This resulted in the removal of connected terminals that are not performing transactions for a long time.

NIBSS, in an effort to sanitise the e-payment space, directed banks that deployed PoS terminals at merchant locations to deactivate all terminals that are not used for transactions. These are terminals that are registered and deployed but have been idle for a long period of time.

The harmonisation, according to NIBSS, will help in providing accurate number of functional PoS as well as encourage owners to encourage merchants at whose location such terminals are deployed to start using them.

A breakdown in the report revealed that in the week of January 7 to 14, the volume of transactions on the 120,000 deployed PoS was 41,000, while in the week August 25 to 31, 2013, the volume of transactions increased to 200,000 representing 46 per cent increase on some 150,000 deployed terminals.

Meanwhile, in the week November 9 to 15, 2013, it increased to 260,000 representing 30 per cent growth.

It was also gathered that unlike the volume transactions that recorded 46 per cent, value of transactions within the period under review did not record much increase, as only 13 per cent was recorded.

The value of transactions in the period in January was N3 billion while in the last week of August, the value stood at N3.4 billion, with the value of transactions in the week of November adding only N200 million to achieve N3.6 billion.

So far, there have been concerted efforts by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other stakeholders in the industry to increase and strengthen the use of PoS as a means of payment. The apex bank recently commenced the implementation of the policy limiting third party cheque to N150,000.

The process of deploying a point of sale terminal requires the PTSPs to first register such terminals with PTSA for the industry, which is NIBSS, before such terminal will be deployed.

The essence of registration of terminal before deployment in the present arrangement is to ensure that the terminal commences transaction immediately it is deployed,