Nigerians made use of Point of Sale terminals 3.03 million daily times to process payments in the first two months of 2022 as the use of cheques dropped to a six-year low, according to data obtained from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc portal.
The data shows that Nigerians used PoS services 178.99 million times in the first two months of 2022, a 25.59 per cent increase from the 142.51 million times it was used in the corresponding period of 2021.
The total value of these transactions was N1.15tn, a 19.76 per cent increase from the N958.14bn worth of transactions that were processed in the corresponding period of 2021.
According to the NIBSS, there are 986,252 registered PoS units in the nation. It added that 955,234 units were deployed and in use.
While the adoption of PoS as a payment gateway increased, the acceptance of cheques has reduced to a six-year low, according to data from the NIBSS portal.
Within the first two months of 2022, cheques were used as payment gateways 669,218 times, a 15.39 per cent decrease from the 772,249 times they were used within the corresponding period in 2021.
In the corresponding period of 2017, cheques were used 1,721,295 times; in the corresponding period of 2018, they were used 1,669,825 times; they were used 1,352,688 times in the corresponding period of 2019; and 1,222,721 times in the corresponding period of 2020.
According to the data, as the volume of usage dropped, the value also did. In 2017, N967.89bn worth of cheque was processed in the first two months of the year, this figure dropped to 876.16bn within the first two months of 2018.
In 2019, N775.58bn worth of cheque was processed in the first two months of the year. It fell to N726.25bn in 2020. In 2021, N525.65bn cheque was processed in the first two months of the year and dropped further to N497.09bn within the first two months of 2022.
Recently, the Group Managing Director, Zenith Bank Plc, Mr Ebenezer Onyeagwu, disclosed that banks had been witnessing an uptake in electronic banking by customers since the onset of the COVID pandemic.
In its ‘Instant Payments – 2020 Annual Statistics’, the NIBSS revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the e-payments landscape and accelerated the adoption of instant payments as more people transitioned to electronic channels for funds exchange in the wake of government.