Point of Sale terminal (PoS) operators in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) cashless policy plan to deploy 200,000 terminals by the end of the year, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now report.
According to CBN PoS guideline, operators and deployers of the terminals are licensed Payments Terminal Service Providers (PTSP) among who are Unified Payments, Paymaster, Etop Nigeria, Easyfuel and Citiserve.
In the new arrangement PTSPs will be required to enter into contracts/service level agreements (SLAs) with the acquirers, banks, merchants or PTSA that will clearly state the terms and conditions of their support services, including the fee structure and timeline for fee settlement.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that presently there are 140, 000 registered PoS in the country out of which 84, 000 have deployed.
It was gathered that the process of deploying a point of sale terminal requires the PTSPs to first register such terminal with Payments Terminal Service Aggregator for the industry which is Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) before such terminal will be deployed.
The essence of registration of terminal before deployment in the present arrangement is to ensure that the terminal commences transaction immediately it is deployed.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the implementation of this guideline has given rise to the increase in the number of deployed PoS in the country.
It was learnt that the number of active PoS on the network of the Aggregator as at March this year was 30,000 and has risen to 84, 000 by June.
It would be recalled that the cashless policy of CBN commenced in Lagos last January as a pilot scheme expected to be extended to other major cities next year.
According to the cashless economic policy unveiled by CBN in April last year individual and corporate customers would be restricted to free daily cumulative cash withdrawals and lodgements of N150,000 and N1 million respectively, but later revised to N500,000 and N3 million.
The policy, which was jointly formulated by CBN and the Bankers Committee, is intended to help in reducing the dominance of cash in the economy.
More so, the 84,000 PoS are basically terminals deployed at merchant locations for payment of transactions and the figure doe not include terminals deployed at bank branches which are designated for lodgment confirmation as well as fund transfer.