Experts Point at N3tr e-Payment Honeypot

e-Payment, a subset of an e-commerce transaction is thought to be valued at some N3 trillion when fully developed according to a body of experts who spoke with Nigeria CommunicationsWeek at the weekend.
The experts are also hoping that as technology develops, the range of devices and processes to transact electronically will continue to increase while the percentage of cash and check transactions continues to decrease.
Intermarc, an e-payment consulting firm in a recent study said that some N500 billion have so far being invested in the sector.
This investment, Mr. Adeyinka Adeyemi, managing partner, Intermarc Consulting said is in the provisioning of information technology and telecommunications infrastructure that powers the system, switching platforms, software, database management, point of sale terminal (PoS) as well as automated teller machine (ATM).
Adeyemi who exclusively spoke to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, said the business potentials in the e-payment sub-sector of the economy is enormous as the sector requires N3 trillion to effectively provide electronic payment system to 150 million Nigerians.
Elsewhere, Mr. Kyari Bukar, managing director, ValuCard Nigeria, said the progress made so far in the sector is insignificant and called for accelerated and concerted investment.
He explained that presently, the system records less than 5 % of the yearly transactions, adding that the e-payment system would be said to be mature when 50% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product is carried out through the system.
Bukar, said the scenario offers a lot of business opportunities in areas such as Mobile money where Central Bank of Nigeria is planning to license operators by middle of this year, the licensing of two ATM consortiums as well as other online service providers.
Experts said that with the mass market in Nigeria constituting about 70 percent of the nations GDP, the impact of deploying cards and other electronic mode of banking in the country has led to increased reach, as customers can now access their accounts even at locations where their banks are not located through the electronic banking models.
They also say that the introduction of various e-models has led to low operational costs, increased operational efficiency, removing cost of cash transactions, multicard and multi application availability, reduced congestions in banking halls amongst others.
It would be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria has expressed its commitment to ensuring that greater percentage of transactions in the country are carried out electronically and in a safe manner. To this end, the bank has successfully completed the migration of all e-payment channel to EMV standard and has issued directive that transactions beyond N10 million be carried out electronically.