Computer Warehouse Group plc (CWG), a leading pan-African ICT company, has been issued a licence to perform the activities of Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) to Point-of-Sale terminals (PoS) in Nigeria by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
This development comes on the heels of a delegation from the apex bank visit to the CWG late last year to assess the company’s preparedness and ensure that the company has fulfilled all conditions necessary, and is therefore qualified to be licensed as a Payment Terminal Service Provider in the country.
In a letter, signed by Dipo Fatokun, director, banking and payment systems department, CBN, noted that CWG “has successfully passed through the various stages of evaluation.” These include an inspection of the company’s facility and processes, an allowance of a test period, during which the company’s products were carefully examined for quality and standard. CWG is “hereby licensed to perform the activities Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) for Point-of-Sale terminals (PoS) in Nigeria”, it concluded. The PTSP license certifies that a company has the infrastructure to competently deploy, maintain and provide support for PoS terminals in Nigeria.
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According to the CBN, “A PTSP shall offer services to acquirers covering all aspects relating to terminal management support, including but not limited to purchase and replacement of spare parts, provision of connectivity, training, repairs, and development of value added services, amongst other things.”
Reacting to the development, Austin Okere, founder/CEO, CWG, noted that “the licence is a testimony to the capability CWG Plc to competently deploy functional PoS terminals to the market at a time when CBN is vigorously pursuing the ideal of making the Nigerian business clime a cashless model.” Although the number of PoS terminals increased to about 125,000 as of June last year and the value of PoS transactions increased to about N138 billion during the same period, statistics from the apex bank also indicate that about 46 percent of adult Nigerians have no access to financial services.
According to Okere, “Our track record in the financial services sector as indicated in the deployment of our Finacle core banking application to foremost banks in Nigeria, our technical platforms for Firstmonie and Diamond Yello account, are pointers to our capacity to be instrumental to the actualisation of a truly cashless economy.”
Speaking in the same vein, James Agada, chief technology officer, observed that CWG’s quest to deploy PoS terminals is an integral part of her new business module christened CWG 2.0. According to him, “The deployment of our POS terminals is inclusive of our business package for SMEs. We believe that there should be 17million terminals if there are over 17 million existing SMEs in the country. This would aid in the growth of smaller businesses and consolidate the cashless economy initiative of the government.” “Our terminals are going to be tailored to suite the specific peculiarities of SMEs. It can work anywhere. It will also allow merchants do more since it has multiple payment option. This means that a merchant can receive payments for bills, sell Jamb pins, airtime and importantly, keep inventory of sales using the same PoS terminal. This will be our quota to enabling inclusive growth in the economy,” he said.
Ben Uzor
