Despite the state of the Nigerian economy, the year 2015 witnessed an unprecedented upsurge in the volume and value of transactions across all payment channels in the industry, compared with what was recorded in 2014, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said.
Consequently, the value of e-payment transactions rose to N48.9 trillion (48,932,506,699,512.20) in 2015, representing 11.57 percent increase compared with N43.85 trillion (43,857,678,478,941.30) in 2014.
Also, the volume of e-payment transactions increased by 43.36 percent to N162.59 million or (162,598,740) in 2015 from N113.42 million or (113,421,933) in 2014.
Dipo Fatokun, director, banking and payment system department, CBN, who gave this breakdown at the ongoing 21st seminar for Finance Correspondents and Business Editors in Ibadan, Oyo State, said there was a significant decline in the actual value in fraud cases, during the same review period.
Concerning Bank Verification Number (BVN), Fatokun said as of February 7, 2016, a total of 23,345,964 customers had enrolled, while over 28,303,332 customers’ BVN, out of the existing 55,316,040 customers in all the banks in Nigeria, had been linked to bank accounts. This represents 51.17 percent increase.
It has been proven that the initiative is already yielding the desired effects following elimination of ghost workers at the Federal Government level.
Fatokun also gave an update on mobile money, saying the average value of transactions the MMOs carry out was in the neighbourhood of over N3.0 billion per month (inter-scheme), with about 100,000 agents scattered all over the country. The figure for January 2016 was over N4 billion.
“The beauty of this service, going by the general perception of users is that, it is easy to use, it is secure, service providers are easily accessible, it saves cost and time,” he said.
Mobile money is one of the initiatives of the CBN to drive financial inclusion, by bringing in the unbanked segment of the society to the formal financial system.
He pointed out that the level of adoption rate and successful implementation of some initiatives come with numerous challenges, which hinders the adoption of some of our initiatives, by the members of the public.
Notable among these challenges are basic infrastructural challenges, lack of awareness/customer education, which has slowed down the adoption rate, low literacy level, resistance of target customers to patronise new products, and high operational cost of running business, among others.
Hope Moses-Ashike
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