The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is rolling out new initiatives to deepen electronic payments and its cashless policy.
One of the initiatives designed to break the logjam associated with Point of Sale (POS) terminals connectivity that the CBN is considering is a voice call.
The CBN’s Director of Banks and Payment Systems Department, Mr. Dipo Fatokun, told journalists of the impending voice innovation in POS during an interview after the presentation of cash rewards to banks’ customers who won prizes in the electronic payment raffle draw .
Fatokun said: “The major infrastructure in POS is connectivity and it is because of this that the mobile POS—the MPOS—is coming into the market. The way mobile POS works is such that, if the signal strength is not even enough or as high as what you will need for a desktop POS, if the signal strength is enough for you to make a voice call, your transactions can still go through. That is why the industry is embracing this mobile POS.”
He noted that “as more of it is being deployed, you see a higher level of successful transactions”. ”A lot of discussions are ongoing so that the telcos will also make this connectivity available on their network, because it rides on the platform of the telcos. If the connectivity is there, then the transactions will be very successful,” he said.
Another aspect of the electronic payment in the incentive scheme that will start soon “is the purchase and cash back, in which case the card holder can walk up to a merchant, make some purchases and also get some cash withdrawals for a token”.
Fatokun is confident “that this will not only encourage users to use their cards, it will also serve to reduce long queues at the ATMs as we have it”. “The only thing you have to do is to make some purchases, though there is a limit to the amount of cash you can withdraw, but, of course you can get cash, so, all these will start very soon – all in an effort to ensure the success of the cashless policy.”
Fatokun added that “daily when you talk of values, close to N100 billion is processed through electronic payment system, but for the POS, they have done an average of about N1.5 billion every day and some days you can have more than that, but on average, it’s about N1.5 billion transactions done on Point of Sale transactions (POS) terminals alone for which these awards are being given today. That shows that, we are really making a lot of progress on POS and others. But of course, there will always be room for improvement as we go on the cashless journey” Fatokun said.
Speaking for the winners, Jephta said he was “very surprised”, adding: “I wasn’t too aware that something like this existed so it came as a shock I also want to try to use this opportunity to tell the banks up to their branch levels to communicate with their customers on this incentive because it took a lot of convincing to get me down here. I got a call yesterday, telling me that I had won some money, I was supposed to come to CBN; it sounded like some 419.”
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