Transactions on the Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) dropped to 90 million in January on growing fears associated with business on the computerized device that provides the clients of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a public space without the needed human clerk, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.
The figure was a record drop in three months compared to 99.6 million in November and108.3 million in December.
Nigeria CommuniationsWeek also gathered that the reduction is as a result of withdrawal of old ATM cards produced with the magnetic stripe technology by most banks.
The magnetic stripe cards were replaced with Chip and Pin card rendering all the old cards useless with effect from January this year.
The drop was also exacerbated by rising bottlenecks being experienced by cardholders to resolve issues arising from transactions on the machine.
It takes about two weeks for a bank to revert mistake of debiting a cardholder who attempts to withdraw money from a bank outside where the account is docile and was not successful.
It is against this backdrop, that Central Bank of Nigeria issued directive to banks to establish a help desk to address issues arising from transactions on the ATMs.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations also revealed that out of the 11,743 Point of Sale terminal so far deployed by merchants across the country, only 20 percent of them are active.
Electronic payment systems in the country are currently undergoing reform geared towards making it more secured for Nigerians to use, and as well reduce human intervention in making payments to government and its agencies.
