By Ngozi Amuche
Funds transfer through mobile devices rose to N228.9 billion in the first six months of 2019. This was a 62 per cent growth over N140.5billion recorded in the same period last year.
According to the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System, the figures from January to June showed that N26.8 billion were transferred via mobile services in January, N30 billion in February and N38.4 billion in March.
In April, mobile transfers valued at N41.5 billion were made, while N25.2 billion was recorded in May. In June, mobile transfer value stood at N45.2 billion.
The steady growth in the embrace of the electronic payment channel led to 36 per cent increase over the value that was recorded in the same period last year, which stood at N1.01 trillion.
The Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) stated that the growth in value was a reflection of the increase in volume of transactions over the channel, while the number of transactions within the six months period rose by 55 per cent to 187.6 million, compared with N120.7 million of last year.
NIBBS also said that, while there has been a general steady growth in transactions across the electronic payment channels, PoS has remained the most used as value and volume over the channel dwarfs others. Deployment by merchant stores and small business owners is seen as the driving force for the growth.
Month-by-month analysis of the NIBSS statistics showed that transactions worth N222.9 billion were carried out over the electronic platform in January, while N193.4 billion was recorded in February.
In March and April, N217.4 billion and N246 billion were recorded respectively. The highest transaction value in the six months was recorded in May, as Nigerians spent N257.7 billion over Point of Sale terminals, while N245.9 billion was recorded in June.
The deals were carried out over 238,801 active terminals deployed by merchants across the country. This showed that additional 21,563 terminals have been deployed this year when compared with 217,283 in active use as at December last year.
According to the NIBSS report, a total of 295,883 terminals were registered as at June ending, which means that 57,082 registered PoS are yet to be deployed, indicating that the number of deployed PoS is still far below the number of registered PoS.
The re-launch of mCASH, a mobile payment system for making low-value retail payments for low-income buyers and sellers, is believed to be the major driver of increase in mobile transfers.
However, with the growth in electronic transactions, there are also concerns over rising electronic frauds. Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum confirmed this fear recently when it disclosed that a total of 63,895 bank customers lost N3.6 billion to cyber fraud in two years – 2017
and 2018.
Speaking on the growth of PoS transactions, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Secretary of the Electronic Payment Providers Association of Nigeria (E-PPAN), Mrs. Regha Onajite, said the increase in the number of electronic transactions shows that efforts being put in place to check e-payment crimes in the country are yielding positive results.
According to her, CBN had taken a very good lead in mitigating e-payment frauds with the implementation of chip and pin technology on cards.
“A lot of advanced countries are just adopting it. So, Nigeria has done very well because chip and pin has been introduced since 2009 as a security measure and that reduced frauds on cards drastically. So, what we are seeing now are friendly compromise and all of that. But you know when you tighten the bolt on one side, the fraudsters move to another level. So, the industry has not relented” she said.
She noted that all the electronic payment service providers are putting in place standards and procedures that can ensure that payment system is safe. “For some time now, you have been hearing us talking about PCI DSS, which stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a proprietary information security standard for organisations that handle branded credit cards from the major card schemes. Almost everybody is now PCI DSS
compliant”
