Cashless Nigeria @ 2: Stakeholders Chart Areas of Focus

Stakeholders in the electronic payment space have commended the success so far recorded in the cashless Nigeria initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which clocks two years this July, even as they chart areas the regulator should focus in order to achieve its objectives.

Tunde Ogungbade, managing director, Global Accelerex, said that the cashless initiative has been successful largely for the formal economy.

“It is difficult to assess at present, the other key objective, namely, the contribution of the cashless policy to the achievement of the Nigerian Vision 2020.  I would however state that for there to be a measureable contribution to the Vision 2020, the cashless policy must succeed in moving at least 50% of the currently estimated informal economy into the formal sector by year 2020.

 “CBN must primarily continue to campaign and bring awareness of the cashless initiative and its benefits to grassroots, especially in the hinterlands where low PoS adoption and usage currently prevails.  CBN must also continue its confidence message of monitoring and management of transaction security and integrity through the Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum managed by its banking and payment system department.  The NEFF programme is viewed by millions of Nigeria on national television and serves as a way to demonstrate CBN’s commitment to the safety, security and the integrity of the payment system.

“CBN can also consider PoS asset financing options for micro-merchant acquisition in partnership with Microfinance Banks, who unlike Deposit Money Banks cannot afford large PoS Capex for artisans in industries currently unattractive for DMB merchant acquirers.

Emmanuel Okoegwale, Principal Associate, Mobilemoney Africa, stated that one significant way to measure the successes of the cashless Nigeria project is to look at how technology has made services to be progressively more accessible and affordable across the urban and rural areas of Nigeria.

“Lots of progress had been made to date. However, we are still far away from democratization and commoditization of basic financial services which will further reduce the distance barrier, coverage and access challenge that is prevalent in the market space in Nigeria.

Mobile financial services that should serve as the basis and entry point to formal financial services space is yet to gain much ground and acceptance across the nation, agency banking is still largely at experimental stages with most large commercial banks while the micro finance entities lack the resources to even make an effort to deploy a decent and sustainable agency network to serve the market.

Progress had been made in creating a universal identification system with the national identity card and the biometric verification number for all account numbers, deployment of point of sale machines, online and e-commerce sectors but agency and mobile money are still struggling.

Millions of people still lack access to basic financial services which is the entry point to going cashless because you need to be able to exchange your physical cash to digital value to go cashless. Carrying cash around comes with significant inconvenience as it reduces the transactional options of the individual.

The ability to get more people into the digital financial services space should be a national priority as it increases transaction velocity, reduce cost and improve access.

To achieve better results and improvements, government should enable digital financial services accelerator programs in key sectors of the economy, the regulator should also move towards more democratization of digital financial services operations and enforcing standards especially with mobile money sector where non-licensed and pirate operators are springing up in the Lagos area on a daily basis.