Nigeria’s Instant Electronic Payment Hits 1.34 Million

• Nigeria’s Instant Electronic Payment Hits 1.34 Million

Bank customers carried out over one million transactions on Nigeria Interbank Settlement System Instant Pay platform recorded on Sunday, live updates provided by the NIBSS has shown.

NIP, which is an online real-time product that facilitates instant digital payment of bills on an account, hit exactly 1,336,441 transactions as of 5.50pm on Sunday.

Analyses of the live electronic payment data indicated that a failure rate of 0.70 per cent was recorded on the platform, with customers experiencing a total of 9,295 failed transactions.

NIP has been adjudged the most preferred platform for electronic payment having grossed more transactions in monetary terms than Point of Sales and e-Bills Payment over the years.

The statistics also showed that Point of Sales’ transactions carried out by merchants and retailers in the country were 582,160 as of 5.50pm on the same day.

The data indicated that transactions on PoS had a high failure rate of 11.58 per cent as the volume of failed transactions on the terminals stood at 67,392 at the same time.

NIP recorded the highest volume of transactions, 11,861 at 5.20pm, while electronic payment on PoS peaked at 5.35pm, recording a volume of 6,613.

Data on the e-payment platform efficiency showed the destination bank, bank customers and source bank were responsible for failed NIP transactions between March 1 and March 22, 2019.

Within the 22 days under review, the data indicated that the NIBSS platform had not in any way contributed to the failed NIP and PoS transactions while the contribution of the customers to the failed transaction was minimal.

For PoS transactions, the data showed that banks, customers and processors contributed to failed transactions.

Within the 22 days, NIP transactions were 99 per cent successful while PoS recorded between 84 to 87 per cent success rates.

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.