Cashless transactions which is also referred to as online transaction fell to N37.67tn in February 2023 because of delayed and failed money transfers.
The new data accessed from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System on Monday by The Punch revealed it was a 4.83 per cent fall from the N39.58tn recorded in January.
Despite the fact that the e-payment gateways were used 901.46 million times, higher than the 638 million times it was used in January, the total value of succesful online transactions fell in January.
Meanwhile, it was reported that since 2020, the NIBSS has not updated its efficiency platform portal, which states the number of failed transitions and more.
The Nigeria Instant Payment System and Point of Sales terminals are the primary payment switches in the nation, and both systems record cashless transactions. From N38.772 trillion in January, the total NIP (immediate payments) dropped to N36.79 trillion in February.
Data from NIBB showed that PoS terminals were still being used, as the value of PoS transactions increased from N807.16 billion in January to N883.45 billion in February.
This publication recalls that the Central Bank of Nigeria announced its naira redesign policy and withdrawal limits, in 2022.
Since this announcement, Nigerians have had to adopt electronic forms of transactions.
While announcing the policy, the Central Bank of Nigeria said, “Customers should be encouraged to use alternative channels (Internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, cards/POS, eNaira, etc.) to conduct their banking transactions.”
However, the pressure of increased use of electronic transactions overwhelmed the banking sector, as the capacity for the sudden surge was not there, causing transactions failures.
According to the report, President of the Bank Customers Association of Nigeria, Dr Uju Ogunbunka, recently said, “You know the banks do not provide network services. Based on what we found out, there was a failure in the network system.”
