- Sallah: Banks Recorded 278,966 Failed Instant Pay Transactions
Bank customers experienced 278,966 failed electronic payment transactions on the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System Instant Pay platform on Tuesday.
The NIP, an online real-time product that facilitates instant payment of bills on accounts, as of 5.40pm on Tuesday, recorded a total volume of 5.43 million transactions, according to live updates provided by the NIBSS.
Analysis of the live electronic payment data indicated that a failure rate of 5.15 per cent was recorded on the platform.
The NIP has been adjudged as the most preferred platform for electronic payment having grossed more transactions in monetary terms than the National Electronic Funds Transfer, Point of Sales and e-Bills Payment over the years.
The statistics also showed that PoS transactions carried out by retailers in the country also had a high failure rate of 11.41 per cent as of 5.40pm on the same day, out of a total transaction volume of 569,838.
The live updates showed that the volume of failed transactions on PoS stood at 65,064 at the same time.
On Tuesday, being the first day of the Eid-El-Kabir celebration, the NIP recorded the highest volume of transactions at 105,849 by 12.20pm, while electronic payment on PoS peaked at 10.10am, recording a volume of 10,721.
Data on the e-payment platform efficiency showed the destination banks for electronic payment contributed the most to failed NIP transactions between July 20 and August 10, 2018.
For the 21 days under review, the data indicated that the NIBSS platform had not in any way contributed to the failed NIP transactions, while the contribution of the customers to declined transactions had remained stable at 0.1 per cent.
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, while WiFi, or Local Area Network have been developed to address this.
Commenting on the factors responsible for the failed transactions, the Head, Corporate Communications, NIBSS, Lilian Phido, recently said that unsuccessful transactions could be traced to network issues in the banks, insufficient funds in the customers’ accounts or problems on the NIBSS platform.
She stated, “There are many parties associated with a typical transaction. The bank, customers and the NIBSS are involved. If the customer doesn’t have money in his or her account, or the account is lean, the transaction will fail.
“If the bank is having network issues, the transaction will fail at that moment. If the NIBSS platform is down, then the platform will not work in all the banks, not just one bank. This is very rare because it means the platform will not work in any of the banks.”
