According to the eleven-month data available on the Nigeria inter-bank settlement scheme (NIBSS), the amount of Point of sale (POS) transactions climbed by 20.5 per cent to 1.06 trillion from 883 million in the same timeframe in 2021.

However, in terms of value, it increased by 32% from N7.56 trillion in November 2022 to N5.73 trillion in the same month in 2021.

The new daily cash withdrawal restriction of N20,000 through the POS channel, which takes effect on January 9, 2023, has been described as a danger to operators’ sales and profitability, according to BusinessDay.

Mzuri’s chief executive officer, Chinedu Onuoha, stated that while value may fall, volume will rise not only at the end of December but also beyond, owing to limited cash availability.

“Another factor we have to take into account is the minimum wage in Nigeria is still 30,000 a month. Not a lot of Nigerians have cash balances and cash needs that exceed the new thresholds. On balance, I still see an upward increase in the volume of transactions done at agent locations,” he said.

Customers with large ticket withdrawals, he claims, will have to seek alternative routes or engage in transaction splitting across many banks. In this instance, a single person may opt to have cards from different banks.

The statistics also revealed that the number of POS banking agents climbed to 12.7 million in 11 months, while registration increased to 20.9 million from January to November 2022, up from 11.4 in 2021.

In the same line, mobile transactions increased by 146% in the eleven months of 2022, to N16.9 trillion from N6.87 trillion at the same time as 2021.

Meanwhile, its volume increased 144.7 per cent to 609 million from 249 million in the previous period.

NIBSS ‘Instant Payments – 2020 Annual Statistics’ report. disclosed that mobile is driving electronic payments in the nation. Accounting for 43 per cent of total transactions in 2020, while 35 per cent of transactions were with USSD, showing 78 per cent of total transfer transactions were carried out using mobile devices.

Also, in terms of Nigeria’s instant payment (NIP), its volume of transactions saw a 4.08 billion rise in the eleven-month period of 2022, from 3.08 billion in 2021.

Following the same trend, its value rose to N310.5 trillion from N241.7 trillion in the period in which it occurred.

According to NIBSS data, the volume of cheque transactions declined by 8.1 per cent to 3.73 million over the eleven-month period of 2022 and 2021, from 4.06 million.

The volume of cheques cleared by Nigerian banks continues to fall as banks and financial technology companies create faster and easier payment methods.

Customers can now effortlessly transfer large sums of money without using cheques, according to Gloria Fadipe, FCMB’s head of research.

Other electronic channels, such as mobile, NIP, USSD code, and so on, will see an increase, but cheques will be unable to compete in this new world of instant value, Onuoha noted.

“Trust is another issue that is working against cheque,” he said.