Electronic payment transactions in Nigeria rose to N1.07 quadrillion in 2024, reaching an all-time high and the first time to hit the quadrillion mark.
In dollar terms, this is about $702.6 billion based on the closing exchange rate of N1,535/$1 on December 31, 2024.
According to the data released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the value recorded on the NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) represents a 79.6% increase over the N600 trillion recorded in 2023.
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 N115.1 trillion over electronic channels in December 2024.
This came as the all-time high monthly record on the NIBSS electronic payment platform.
Transactions volume
Meanwhile, the volume of transactions processed by NIBSS for the year also jumped from 9.7 billion in 2023 to 11.2 billion in 2024.
This represents a 15.5% increase in the volume of electronic transactions year on year.
Industry analysts believe that the surge in e-payment transactions can be linked to the recent cash crunch experience and the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) limiting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn daily.
- According to the revised cashless policy, which came into effect on January 9, 2023, cash withdrawal by an individual is limited to N500,000 a week, while corporate organizations have N5 million withdrawal limit in a week.
- A Lagos-based financial analyst, Mr. Adewale Adeoye, said the non-availability of cash in banks like it used to be has been pushing more Nigerians to embrace cashless payment.
- According to him, those who need cash by all means now resort to PoS operators, through which they either use their cards or transfer into accounts to receive cash.
“It is expected that electronic transactions will continue to go up since banks are not willing to release cash like before. Aside from the CBN withdrawal limit, if you enter a bank today to withdraw cash, they may tell you that you can’t collect more than N5,000 over the counter.
“So, you are forced to use ATMs, which in most cases are also short of cash. If all that fails, you start looking for PoS operators or you resort to doing mobile transfers,” he said.
What you should know
The NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) 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 (USSD), POS, ATM, etc. to their customers.
- Aside from the cash scarcity experienced in March 2023, the revised cashless policy implemented by the CBN which further limits the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from banks daily, has also been pushing e-payment growth.
- Many Nigerians are now getting used to mobile transfers, paying with PoS, and USSD, among others.
