Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System on Wednesday said cashless transactions in Nigeria increased to N611.06trn in 2023.

It said the payments grew to N611.06trn from N395.38trn as of the end of 2022 indicating a 54.55 per cent year-on-year growth.

The NIBSS Instant Payments is an account-number-based, online real-time Inter-Bank payment solution developed in the year 2011 by NIBSS. It is the Nigerian financial industry’s preferred funds transfer platform that guarantees instant value to the beneficiary.

According to NIBSS, over the years, Nigerian banks have exposed NIP through their various channels, that is, internet banking, bank branches, Kiosks, mobile apps, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, POS, ATM, etc. to their customers.

Analysis of the data showed that electronic payment channels were used 11.05 billion times in 2023, a 75.96 per cent increase from the 6.28 billion times they were used in 2022 while the total value of instant payment in 2023 was N600.36trn and Point of Sales transactions was N10.7trn and relied upon for 1.38 billion times.

It said said the figure hitting an all-time high indicates more acceptance by Nigerians to embrace cashless payments.

While the e-payment data shows a steady increase throughout the 12 months of the year, the highest value was recorded in December. Being a festive period with lots of spending activities, Nigerians spent a total of N71.9 trillion over electronic channels in December 2023.

The NIBSS data showed that e-payment volume hit an all-time high of 1.1 billion in March 2023, the time Nigerians experienced cash scarcity and were forced to transact through electronic channels. However, the value for the month was not as high as what was recorded in December of the same year.

Meanwhile, the volume of transactions processed by NIBSS for the year also jumped from 5.1 billion in 2022 to 9.7 billion in 2023. This represents a 90% increase year on year.

A look at the value of electronic transactions month by month shows that Nigerians spent N38.9 trillion on electronic platforms in January 2023, while in February, e-payment value was N36.8 trillion.

Similarly, In March 2023, the value of electronic transactions jumped to N48.3 trillion, driven by the scarcity of cash at that time.

By April, a total of N41.3 trillion was spent on the electronic channels, while in May transaction volume was N45.9 trillion.

NIP transactions value in June 2023 was N45.3 trillion, a slight decline from the value recorded in May. July saw e-payment transactions jump to N47.4 trillion.

In August, the value of NIP transactions climbed further to N50.9 trillion, while it rose to N51 trillion in September.

October and November transactions value were N59 trillion and N63.6 trillion respectively, while the highest transaction value of N71.9 trillion was recorded in December.

Cashless transactions in the country were partly boosted by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s naira redesign policy and withdrawal limits from December 2022.

After announcing a limit on transactions, the apex bank said, “Customers should be encouraged to use alternative channels (Internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, cards/POS, eNaira, etc.) to conduct their banking transactions.”

Punch