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Electronic (e-payment) transactions in Nigeria increased by 66% year-on-year to N330 trillion in December 2021 from N198.61 trillion at the end of 2020. The figure underscores a pulsating growth and positive adoption of e-payment by an increasing number of Nigerians, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The financial regulator said COVID-19 pandemic impacted positively on digitalisation by accelerating the shift to digital platforms for transactions.
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While keynoting a recent conference by BusinessDay in Lagos on‘The Future of Payments and Fraud: Catching the Next New, CBN’s Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Aishah Ahmad, said enabling environment and competition in fintech sector has helped to create waves of digital services to drive e-payment.
“Innovation is acknowledged as an important lever to drive meaningful progress in this direction. While financial inclusion continues to improve in Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria has set an ambitious target and that is to achieve means for enabling competition within the fintech sector, which facilitates digital financial services,” said Ahmad who was represented by Deputy Director, Banking and Payments System Department at CBN, Taiwo Oladimeji.
She added: “Firstly, the need for new innovative players to be identified and licensed in order to bring them within the regulatory limits was highlighted. Also, creation of a framework to understand the markets for new players as more energy will attract opportunities and monitor changes in the monetary transmission mechanism.
“The third one is to achieve financial inclusion and democratised access to quality, affordable and cost-effective financial services for all Nigerians by resolving the challenges related to identity management, neutral financial access points into operability of payment systems, electronic payments, and open banking among others”.
According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), various e-payment channels continued to record high adoption rate from 2021 into 2022 underscored by increasing shift to online portals such as e-commerce sites and a marked preference for digital payments for services and goods.
