The volume of Point of Sales (POS) activities via mobile devices in Nigeria rose by 95.4 percent in 2018, the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) has said.
Volume of the transactions increased to 285.9 million in full year 2018 from 146.3 million in 2017, figures by NIBSS said in a report released Thursday.
The report also showed that the value of POS transactions rose by 64.3 percent to N2.3 trillion during the year, from N1.4 trillion in 2017.
Gbolahan Ologunro, an equity research analyst at Lagos-based CSL Stockbrokers attributed the rise to the increased digitalisation of traditional banking services.
“We see banks now shifting to digital channels in the form of online banking transactions and that has enabled customers to carry out their day-to-day transactions off those channels,” Ologunro said. “It is consistent with the general growth in non- interest revenue that banks recorded as at the first nine months of 2018.”
Additionally, the value of mobile transfers rose by 48.3 per cent to N291.6 billion in 2018, from N196.6 billion in the previous year.
Similarly, the volume of transactions of mobile transfers increased by 43.1 per cent from 5.1 million in 2017 to 7.3 million in 2018.
Nigerian banks are trying to catch up with their counterparts in other parts of Africa in the provision of online and mobile banking facilities as part of efforts to deepen financial inclusion in the continent’s most populous country. The Central Bank of Nigeria has set a target of 80 percent inclusion to be achieved by year 2020.
Bismarck Rewane , M.D, Financial Derivatives Company Limited, said that the rise in volume of online transactions is a good thing to the economy
“People are shifting from cash transactions to online transactions for safety and convenience reasons and it has increased the circulation of the velocity of money which has as an impact on the number of transactions,” Rewane said.
Also, the volume of transactions on NIBSS instant payment (NIP) platform rose by 96 percent to 729.3 million in 2018 from 371.0 million in the previous year, while its value increased by 40.2 percent from N40.5 trillion in 2017 to N56.8 trillion in 2018.
The increased penetration of online banking services is already having an impact on the volume of cheque transactions as it reduced (year-on-year) by 16.7 percent
Ayodele Teriba, CEO, Economic Associates said this trend implied that more people are catching up with mobile transfers than before.
“In the past, before you could do any transfer, you would have to go to the bank. But now you can use a token at home to do your mobile transfer anywhere,” he said.
BUNMI BAILEY
