Nigerians transacted businesses worth N183.4 billion through mCASH in the first three months of this year.
New Telegraph learnt that the mobile payment platform, which was recently re-launched by the Nigerian Inter-bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) in partnership with banks and telecom operators, is now gaining traction among mobile users.
mCASH is a mobile payment system for making low-value retail payments, designed to extend electronic payment options to low-income buyers and sellers dealing in cash. It leverages the NIBSS Instant Payments infrastructure (NIP) for immediate fund delivery to merchants’ accounts and the mobile telephone USSD technology, which, in recent times, has become the most accessible channel for financial and non-financial transactions.
According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the platform maintained steady growth on monthly basis to push transactions volume at the end of first quarter to 58.7 million. Analysis of the monthly data showed that deals worth N54.3 billion were carried out over the platform in last January. In February, value of deals over the electronic payment channel rose to N61.7 billion, while in March, N67.4 billion was spent.
The NBS’s data revealed that a total of 557,083,712 electronic-payment transactions valued at N34.02 trillion were recorded in selected banks across the country in Q1 2019. The report showed that the NIBSS, Instant Payments (NIP) dominated the volume of transactions recorded in Q1’19 with a deal volume of 232.8 million, valued at N24.17 trillion. On quarterly basis, the value of NIP transactions rose by 3.0 per cent during the quarter from N23.57 trillion in Q4’18.
Further analysis showed that the value of cheque transactions declined by 8.0 per cent to N1.2 trillion from N1.3 trillion in Q4’18. Similarly, value of Automated Teller Machine (ATM) dropped by 12 per cent to N1.5 trillion from N1.7 trillion in Q4’18. In the same vein the value of Point of Sale (PoS) transactions fell by 11 per cent to N634 billion in Q1’19 from N714 billion in Q4’18, while that of Mobile Payment dropped by 83 per cent to N101 billion in Q1’19 from N592 billion in Q4’18.
Following the same trend, the value of transactions made through Remita platform dropped by 99.6 per cent to N19.3 billion from N5 trillion in Q4’18. Value of Web transactions also declined by 51 per cent to N108 billion from N221 billion in Q4’18.
According to former Managing Director of NIBSS, Mr Adebisi Shonubi, the mCASH initiative was borne out of the need to enhance financial inclusion in Nigeria by extending e-payment benefits to payers and merchants operating at the local level, especially the small and medium-scale business owners.
“The intention is to expand the payment opportunity for people who still use cash today to find a more convenient means of making payments,” he said.
“To ensure the paradigm shift, we had to promote an ecosystem partnership consisting of banks and telecommunication companies, thereby birthing what has become a novel collaboration anywhere in the world – a service that is not one bank or one telco-driven but, which is ecosystem-driven.”
To allay the fears of users over possible electronic frauds, NIBSS had disclosed that every transaction via the mCASH electronic payment platform enjoys maximum insurance cover of N50,000.
Speaking on the benefits of mCASH as against other platforms, Shonubi said the insurance cover is to enhance confidence in the platform, adding that NIBSS and telecommunication companies (telcos) have also upgraded mCASH to deter SIM swaps related and other types of frauds.
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