Popularity of Point of Sale terminals (PoS) is growing as merchants who use PoS for payment of goods and services have recorded a princely N127billion in 11 months, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.
This was value for 7.4million transactions achieved between January and November this year.
During the period, the number of terminals registered with National Central Switch (NCS) being operated by Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) the Payments Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) for the industry, stood at 157,000 while connected devices were 110,000.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek intelligence however observed a reduction in the number of deployed terminals from 150,000 in August this year to 110,000 due to a harmonization exercise embarked upon by banks and payments terminal service providers (PTSP).
This resulted in the removal of connected terminals that are not performing transactions for a long time.
It would be recalled that Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), in an effort to sanitize the e-payment space directed banks who are owners of PoS terminals deployed at merchant locations to deactivate all terminals that are not use for transactions.
These are terminals that are registered and deployed but have been idle for a long period of time.
This harmonization according to NIBSS will help in providing accurate number of functional PoS as well as encourage owners to encourage the merchants at whose location such terminals are deployed to start using them.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that in the week of January 7 to 14, the volume of transactions on the 120,000 deployed PoS was at 141,000, while in the week of August 25 to 31, 2013 the volume of transactions increased to 200, 000 representing 46 percent increase on some 150,000 deployed terminals.
But, in the week of November 9 to 15, 2013 it increased to 260,000 representing 30%.
It was also gathered that unlike the volume transactions that recorded 46 percent, value of transactions within the period under review did not record such increase, recording only 13 percent. The value of transactions in the period in January was N3b while in the last week of August the value stood at N3.4b, more so, value of transactions in the week of November added only N200million to achieve N3.6b.
There have been concerted efforts by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other stakeholders in the industry to increase and strengthen the use of PoS as a means of payment. It would be recalled that the apex bank recently commenced the implementation of limiting third party cheque to N150, 000.
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.