Mobile payment rises 8,400% as Emefiele inaugurates PSS board

Godwin Emefiele, gov- ernor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has said the country re- corded significant success in the electronic payment sys- tem as the mobile payment channel grew by 8,400 per- cent to N296.9 billion in 2014 from N3.5 billion in 2012. Other payment channels that recorded growth include Point of Sale (PoS) which rose to N312 billion in 2014 from N48 billion in 2012, about 550 percent increase; NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) increased by 423 percent to N19.9 trillion in 2014 from N3.8 trillion in 2012; web channel grew to N65.6 bil- lion in 2014 by 108 percent from N31.5 billion in 2012, and Nigerian Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) rose by 7.5 percent from N13.6 trillion in 2012 to N14.6 trillion in 2014. Emefiele acknowledged that a lot still remains to be done for the payments sys-
tem to be successfully bench- marked against the global best practices, as in most de- veloped nations of the world. The governor on Friday in Lagos inaugurated members of the Payment System Strat- egy (PSS) board, the Payment Scheme Boards and the Initia- tives Working groups of the Nigerian Payment System. “There is no doubt that we have indeed recorded many successes along the way; however, we do not intend to rest on our oars. In that sense, looking in retrospective, and interpreting the future of our payments system in the light of the present, we see our ac- complishments as a stepping stone, bearing in mind that there are still a great deal to be done”, Emefiele said. In order to further deepen the adoption of electronic payments in Nigeria, the CBN identified eight new industry verticals and their objectives. These include agriculture, smart cities, government flows, hotels and entertain-
ment, transport, education, health, bill payment and direct debits. Suleiman Barau, deputy governor, operations, CBN, explained that the inaugu- ration was part of the apex bank’s efforts aimed at trans- forming the nation’s payment system. Barau, who was repre- sented by the deputy gover- nor, economic policies direc- torate, Sarah Alade, said that a well functioning national payment system was essen- tial for an efficient financial sector. Emefiele highlighted some of the achievements made so far in the electronic payment to include imple- mentation of Nigeria Uni- form Bank Account Number (NUBAN), the deployment of a new RTGS that is built on the Society for World- wide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) messaging standards and introduction of the cash-less policy, among others.