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By Chinwendu Obienyi
Efforts by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure efficient payment system in the country appears to be yielding fruits as transactions worth N33.2 trillion were performed electronically in the month of August through the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) Instant Payment platform (NIP).
The NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) is an account-number-based, online-real-time Inter-Bank payment solution developed in the year 2011 by NIBSS. It is the Nigerian financial industry’s preferred funds transfer platform that guarantees instant value to the beneficiary.
Data from NIBS indicates that the figure came as an all-time high e-payments value recorded in a month since the deployment of the platform. Compared to the N29.3 trillion recorded in July, this shows a 13.3 per cent growth. Year on year, the e-payment value increased by 50 per cent compared to N22.1 trillion recorded in August last year.
NIBSS says the value of e-payment recorded was a reflection of an increase in the volume of deals within the month. The NIP volume rose to 448 million in August, showing a 10.6 per cent increase over 405 million recorded in July.
An analysis of the 8 months data just released by NIBSS showed that the NIP platform recorded N26.6 billion transactions in January. This was a 43.7 per cent increase over N18.5 trillion recorded in the same month of last year.
Similarly, in February, deals worth N27.2 trillion were sealed over the electronic platform. Compared with February 2021 when N18.3 trillion was recorded, this represented 48.6 per cent growth.
In March, the platform recorded 31.8 trillion transactions, a 44.5 per cent increase over the N22 trillion recorded in the same month last year.
The value of transactions on the NIP platform stood at N29.2 trillion in April this year. This also shows a 41.6 per cent increase over the N20.6 trillion recorded in April 2021. In May, the value of e-payment transactions stood at N29.6 trillion, a 43% increase compared with N20.7 trillion recorded in the same period last year.
The NIP transactions rose to N31.7 trillion in June 2022, a 37 per cent growth over N23.1 trillion posted at the same time in 2021. Similarly, the month of July also reflected a 31 per cent increase from N22.4 trillion last year to N29.3 trillion this year.
For August, the value of e-payments in Nigeria increased by 50 per cent to N33.2 trillion compared to N22.1 trillion recorded in the same period last year.
This meant that the total value of e-payment deals in the last 8 months now stands at N238.7 trillion.
