A recent report by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has revealed that only 60 percent of all failed ePayment transactions that occurred earlier this year have been resolved, leaving 40 percent of complaints unresolved.
The number of failed transactions rose as a result of the Federal Government policy on naira redesign which led to a cash shortage in the country and forced the citizens to resort to ePayment adoption with limited capacity to process such an increase in transaction volume.
It is interesting to note that the increase in failed electronic payments in February caused a 4.83 percent decrease in the value of cashless transactions to N37.67tn from the N39.58tn that was recorded in January 2023.
Investors King observed that these problems have led to more Nigerians flooding the banking halls over one unresolved transaction or the other. These transactions, according to findings, run into millions of Naira.
Customers have continued to besiege the banking halls with the hope that their failed ePayment transactions would be resolved, while several other customers are told to come back later.
In response to these challenges that ravaged the ePayment mode of transaction, the chairman committee of e-business Industry Heads (CeBIH), Celestina Appeal, stated that banks have quickly risen to the challenge of upscaling their channels and infrastructure to meet the demands.
In her words, “As an impact of this surge, we witnessed some transaction failures on ePayment channels, and I am aware that banks quickly rose to the challenge of upscaling these channels and infrastructure to meet the demands. This situation is calm now, Banks have absorbed the lessons from these scenarios and are very well prepared to serve customers regardless of the level of demand or transaction traffic.
“I do not have the exact figure for the failure rates as it stands today, but going by our analysis, the failure rate (in percentage) has not worsened, the systems only experienced more failed transactions counts as a direct reflection of the increased overall transaction fed into the digital payment ecosystem.”
Following the adoption of the ePayment mode of transaction, statistics revealed that PoS transactions rose from 113.53 million in February to 177.93 million in March, with the value also rising from N83.4 billion to N1.152 trillion, which signifies an increase of about 30.41 percent.
In terms of transactions carried out through mobile devices, the volume rose from 183,687.1 in February to 380,110.94 in March. The value rose from N2.56 trillion in February to N4.14 trillion a month after. Cheque transaction volume also increased to 426,926 in March from 333,952 in February with values put at N283.4 billion in March as against N238.4 billion in February.
