The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) has said that transactions worth N204.5 trillion were performed electronically in Nigeria between January and July this year through the NIBSS Instant Payment platform (NIP). This shows a 40% increase in e-payments in the country when compared with N145.8 trillion recorded in the same period last year.
The surge in electronic transactions shows that more Nigerians are embracing the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to NIBSS, the value of e-payment recorded was a reflection of the increase in the volume of deals within the period. The NIP volume rose to 2.7 billion in the seven months, showing a 42% increase over 1.9 billion recorded in the same period last year.
Monthly analysis
- An analysis of the 7 months data just released by NIBSS showed that the NIP platform recorded N26.6 trillion transactions in January. Year on year, this was a 43.7% increase over N18.5 trillion recorded in the same month of last year.
- Similarly, in February, deals worth 27.2 trillion were sealed over the electronic platform. Compared with February 2021 when N18.3 trillion was recorded, this represented 48.6% growth.
- In March, the platform recorded N31.8 trillion in transactions, a 44.5% increase over the N22 trillion recorded in the same month last year.
- The value of transactions on the NIP platform stood at N29.2 trillion in April this year. This also shows a 41.6% increase over the N20.6 trillion recorded in April 2021
- In May, the value of e-payment transactions stood at N29.6 trillion, a 43% increase compared with N20.7 trillion recorded in the same period last year.
- The NIP transactions rose to N31.7 trillion in June 2022, a 37% growth over N23.1 trillion posted same time in 2021.
- The data for July also reflected a 31% increase from N22.4 trillion last year to N29.3 trillion this year.
The NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) is an account-number-based, online-real-time Inter-Bank payment solution developed in the year 2011 by NIBSS. It is the Nigerian financial industry’s preferred funds transfer platform that guarantees instant value to the beneficiary.
According to NIBSS, over the years, Nigerian banks have exposed NIP through their various channels, that is, internet banking, bank branch, Kiosks, mobile apps, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), POS, ATM, etc. to their customers.