NIGERIA: Banks record 2.6 million instant pay transactions

Ife Ogunfuwa

Bank customers carried out about 2.6 million transactions on Nigeria Interbank Settlement System Instant Pay platform on Friday; live updates provided by the NIBSS have shown.

As Nigerians make last-minute withdrawals and purchases in readiness for the weekend, online banking transactions via NIP hit exactly 2,621,952 transactions at 5.41 pm on Friday.

According to the data, Point of Sales’ transactions carried out by merchants and retailers in the country reached 944,362 at 5.41 pm on the same day.

NIP is an online real-time product that facilitates instant payment of bills on an account.

Analyses of the live electronic payment data indicated that a low failure rate of 0.46 per cent was recorded on the NIP platform, with customers experiencing a total of 11,846 declined transactions.

The data showed that funds transfer formed the bulk of volume of the NIP transactions.

NIP has been adjudged the most preferred platform for electronic payment having grossed more transactions in monetary terms than PoS and e-Bills Payment over the years.

The data indicated that transactions on PoS had a high failure rate of 12.25 per cent as the volume of failed transactions on the terminals stood at 115,877 at the same time.

Data on the e-payment platform efficiency showed that unavailable beneficiary banks and exceeded transfer limit by bank customers were the major reasons for the declined NIP transactions.

For the PoS transactions, customer’s error and issuer bank error were the major reasons for the declined payments.

Stakeholders in the industry have attributed the high rate of failed transactions on PoS to poor network and payment systems that use multiple SIM cards. WiFi or Local Area Network had been developed to address this.

The President, Association of Mobile Money Agents in Nigeria, Mr Victor Olojo, explained that though some of the failed transactions stemmed from network disruptions, technology glitches contributed significantly to the decline transactions.

Olojo observed that the declined transactions were high during peak transaction periods and festive seasons.

SOURCE:PUNCH NEWS