FirstBank Holds 31% of Card Market, Poised for Cashless Regime

First Bank plc, Nigeria’s oldest commercial bank,  said it was ready to fully implement the recently introduced ‘cash-less’ policy announced by the central bank of  Nigeria (CBN) on the back of its robust ICT provisioning, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now report.
This is coming on the heels of the bank’s recent deployment of Microsoft’s messaging collaboration, a unified communication and information security solution aimed at transforming its employee productivity, customer responsiveness and risk management.
Mr. Chuma Ezirim, group head, e-Business of First Bank told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek exclusively that the bank had put all necessary facilities in place to implement the pilot-programme of the ‘cash-less’ policy without any hindrance.
The policy which came into being on January 1st is intended to save about N1 Billion for the country per annum.
Ezirim said that FirstBank which has the largest network of bank branches in Nigeria was even more than prepared for the project.
 “FirstBank didn’t just wake up into the programme. It has been a systematic programming from the top-to-bottom at the bank. Equipment had been procured, personnel trained at various times. So for us at FirstBank, we were ready even before the policy took effect on January 1,” noted Ezirim.
Ezirim told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that FirstBank controls 31 per cent of the entire card market in the country.
He said that “FirstBank issues one out of every three Verve cards in Nigeria. We have the highest number of ATM Terminals; PoS Terminals and the highest numbers of mobile banking subscribers.”
Commenting further on the banks’ commitment to the cash-less policy implementation, Ezirim who also serves simultaneously as chairman of committee of e-Banking industry heads (CeBIH), said the bank remains the one in the country to issue e-card and get it activated within 15 minutes.
“Our commitment to this new monetary policy is 100 per cent. The group managing director, Bisi Onasanya personally leads this operation. So it is not a matter of delegation, it is policy of leadership by example to get it implemented at full capacity,” enthused Ezirim.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that benefits of introducing e-cards as an alternative to cash-in-transaction which has dominated Nigeria’s market landscape are aimed at not only facilitating convenience, but also aims to provide security to market operators.
Tunde Lemo, deputy governor of CBN noted that currently retail-cash-payment amounts to about 60 per cent of transactions in the country. But the introduction of e-channels payment will help in reducing the burden huge cash retail-payment.
The policy would also lead to adoption of a unified national identity number which will eventually add up to increase in use of card payment in Nigeria.