By Abibat Aliu
Despite several challenges confronting Point of Sales (PoS) businesses in Nigeria, transactions on the various terminals climbed to N735.6 billion in September 2022, according to data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
Lately, challenges, including the cost of acquiring terminals, delays in the reversal of money; network issues; bank/customers problems; security; poor power supply, among others have confronted PoS in the country.
Notably, due to the unemployment challenges in Nigeria, many youths, including women have become PoS merchants.
According to the NIBSS, in the last nine months of the year, Nigerians spent a total of N6.05 trillion over PoS, which is almost the same amount recorded in the full year 2021, which stood at N6.4 trillion.
NIBSS said the volume of transactions on PoS went up as it increased by 14 per cent year on year to 100.4 million in September 2022.
These transactions, according to the statistics, were carried out over 1.484 million active terminals deployed by merchants across the country. This means that in the last nine months, a total of 568,488 additional PoS terminals have been added as the number of deployed machines stood at 915,519 as of December 2021.
However, there is still a gap between the number of registered PoS and the number of deployed machines. According to NIBSS, a total of 2.164 million PoS machines had been registered across the country as of September this year, which showed that a total of 680,991 terminals are either yet to be deployed or have become inactive.
The massive adoption by merchants for receiving payments has contributed to the growth of PoS transactions in Nigeria.
PoS is also bridging the gap created by the shortage of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) deployed by banks, as many Nigerians now withdraw through PoS agents.
The profitability of POS transactions for both banks and vendors has bolstered the growing deployment of POS. The cost of the transaction is often borne by the customers, creating profit for the POS operator and the bank.
The report also showed that transactions worth N32.8 trillion were performed electronically in September through the NIBSS Instant Payment platform (NIP), bringing the total value of e-payment deals in the last nine months to N271.5 trillion.
The NIP is an account-number-based, online real-time Inter-Bank payment solution developed in the year 2011 by NIBSS. It is the Nigerian financial industry’s preferred funds transfer platform that guarantees instant value to the beneficiary.
According to NIBSS, year on year, the e-payment value increased by 39.5 per cent compared with the N23.5 trillion recorded in September 2021. The September 2022 figure was, however, a 1.2 per cent decline compared with the value of electronic payment transactions recorded in the country in August, which stood at N33.2 trillion.
