PoS Transactions Hit 3.6m in 3 Months

Point of Sales (POS) Terminals, the machine used to accept cards for payment of goods and services are increasingly becoming popular as merchants in the country recorded 3.6million transactions over the electronic payment devices from January to March this year, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.
 
The figure was achieved on 35, 000 active 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.

Tunde Ogungbade, managing director, Global Accelerex, a PoS terminal services provider, said that consumers have finally discovered that the use of Point of Sales (POS) terminals can help them leapfrog the obstacle waiting for cash to dispense at ATMs.

“They now better use of their time while giving them some measure of security because they don’t carry cash” he added.

Gungbade said “we observed that POS transaction value has grown exponentially by 300%, from 5.1 trillion in September 2012 to 15.3 trillion naira in September 2013. While this is impressive, there is more expected because these transactions by value and volume are behind numbers for NIP, which I can only imagine is behind cash”

Nodding in agreement, Agada Apochi, managing director, Unified Payments, also advocated the use of value added tax to encourage the use of electronic channels for payments.

According to him, government can also do a lot by creating the right incentives for adoption of e-payments. If Government offers tax incentives for e-payments, it will be an effective tool to encourage a cashless culture.

That does not mean lower tax collection by government. Rather, Government tax collection will increase. For instance, if Government were to offer 50% incentive on Value Added Tax for payments made electronically, Government tax collection could increase by several multiples. 2.5% VAT on N100 million transactions is higher than 5% VAT on transactions of N10 million. Currently, many transactions are not tracked because of cash payments and that is to the disadvantage of government.