Why more Nigerians prefer transfers to card payment – OnePipe Head of Operations

Yvonne Elaigwu, Head of Operations at fintech API company, OnePipe, has said that more Nigerians will continue to embrace payment with transfers as opposed to card payments because it is more secure.

According to her, the failure rate of card transactions is also pushing many Nigerians to transfer, which is swifter and less prone to transaction failure.

She added that the COVID 19 pandemic, which forced the world to prioritize contactless interactions is also one of the drivers of the rise and adoption of payment via transfer.

What the OnePipe Head of Operations is saying

• While accessing the digital payment ecosystem in Nigeria in an interview with Nairametrics, Elaigwu said: “Today, the concept of pay with transfer is so accepted that the cab driver, who before now would only accept cash, (who probably never went through the POS stage) would, without much ado share an account number to receive payment for his services. Data supports this shift and growth, the CBN report on e-payments showed that in 2020, ‘pay with transfer’ NIP volume was about 200% more than the volume of payments made on both POS terminals and ATM machines and significantly more in transaction value.”
• “Businesses are now more comfortable with receiving payments digitally; most businesses today are profiled to receive payments digitally and this is evidenced in the fact that the transaction value and volume of all e-payment platforms are consistently growing.
• “I also think that we will also begin to see simplified and more secure payment methods as people continue to embrace “pay with transfer”. Data already shows that people are gravitating toward this mode of payment and the failure rate of card transactions is not making it harder. In the future, the relevance of card payments would be minimized, thereby reducing the associated fraud incidences accompanied by card payments,” she added.

Data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) also confirms that bank customers are embracing mobile transfers more than other e-payment channels. Between January and April this year, bank customers had transferred a total of N4.8 trillion over mobile.