Nigeria's Payment Channels Made a Record-breaking ₦86 trillion in 2017

Nigeria’s payment channel transactions hit an all-time high of ₦86.1 trillion in 2017 according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics. This is a 32% increase from the total transaction value of ₦65.1 trillion.

Total transaction volume for the year was a whopping ₦1.4 billion, a 58% rise from the same period in 2016. The report compiles data from cheques, POS, Mobile Money, Online web transactions, ATM, NIP, NEFT.

By Volumes

NIBSS InterBank Payment (NIP) rose by a whopping 141% year on year posting a total of 370.8 million transactions in 2017.
POS transactions also rose significantly topping 130% to close at 146 million transactions
Internet web transaction grew by 106% to close at 29 million suggesting increase in adoption rate among Nigerians
Mobile Payment remained rather flat growing by just 2% to record a total transaction of 47.8 million
Cheque transactions continued to drop and were just 10.8 million transactions in 2017, representing an 8% drop.

By Value

POS transactions rose the highest gaining 86% year on year closing at ₦6.4 trillion
NIP transactions had over 65% of transaction value at ₦56 trillion. It gained 47% year on year, indicating a resilient and dominant preference for most Nigerians.
It also shows Nigerians still prefer to make transfers via internet banking portals.
Mobile payments also had a strong showing, growing by 46% to close the year at ₦1.1 trillion.
A lot of venture capital funds have poured into the mobile money space in recent years as startups hustle to tap into a growing but underserved market.

Key takeaways

Mobile money is growing by value but not fast enough in terms of transaction volume
This suggests early adopters increasingly rely on it to pay for transactions.
At ₦23,000 per transaction, mobile payment rose 43%, the highest in 2017 and the only positive gain (excluding NEFT) that rose based on value per transaction metrics.
One could thus infer that there is an increase in confidence relying on mobile payments for transactions
People still use cheque payments for transactions and definitely cannot be ignored. A transaction value of ₦5.3 trillion still represents 6.2% of the market (8.9%: 2016) and is still twice POS, mobile and web payments combined.