Ife Ogunfuwa
The number of active Point of Sale terminals used by merchants for financial transactions rose by 36 per cent between June 2018 and June 2019, the latest report by the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement Scheme indicated.
The report stated that a total of 161,336 active PoS terminals were deployed for cashless transactions by banks across the country in June this year as against 118,707 in June 2018.
In addition, the payments report showed that newly registered PoS terminals was 295,883 in June this year, recording 35 per cent growth from 219,930 terminals registered as of June 2018.
The report stated that the number of merchants using the PoS terminals also grew by 35 per cent within the same period.
The PoS report added, “The biggest winners in the POS adoption push, given the period under consideration, are the fuel station, retail and fast food sectors. The volume of transactions in these sectors grew by 97 per cent, 63 per cent and 45 per cent, respectively during this period.”
The value of transactions on the e-payment platform also grew in relation to the increasing number of terminals in circulation.
The NIBSS data indicated that N1.4tn worth of transactions were carried out between January and June 2019, an amount which is 38 per cent higher than the N1.02tn recorded in the corresponding period in 2018.
In terms of cards used for electronic payment, Mastercard was mostly used by bank customers while the market share of Verve card increased significantly.
Mastercard grossed 104 million transactions in the six months under review, followed by Verve card which recorded 52.7 million electronic transactions and Visa with 31.3 million payments.
“Mastercard continues to be the leading card brand used on the PoS in the industry. MasterCard, Verve and Visa’s market share increased by 48 per cent, 81 per cent, and 52 per cent, respectively as compared to their corresponding market shares in June 2018,” the NIBSS report stated.
The report stated that the PoS usage was concentrated in urban areas with Lagos State recording 67.8 million financial transactions and leading other urban regions.
Bank customers in Rivers State carried out 8.4 million transactions; 7.5 million transactions were carried out in the Federal capital Territory; 4.4 million in Ogun State and four million in Delta State.
Stakeholders in the industry have attributed the growth in transactions on the PoS terminals to the expansion of agent bankers across the country.
The Shared Agency Network Expansion facility has pledged to increase the number of agents to 250,000 across the six geopolitical regions by 2020.
The facility said it was prioritising the northern region due to the concentration of financially- excluded persons in the region.
The Chief Executive Officer of Enhancing Financial Innovation Access, Mr Essaie Diei, recently said that a 2018 survey the development agency carried out discovered that 63.2 per cent of adults in Nigeria were financially-included.
He noted that from the survey, 26.6 million adult Nigerians were financially- excluded and close to 36.6 million of the adult population did not have access to bank accounts or other means of payment.
The survey also revealed that three per cent of adults used bank accounts in the past 12 months; and one per cent used mobile money agents.
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