Poor enlightenment, fear of loss of money, power epilepsy, inefficient network services and deliberate hatred have been adduced by experts as the major reasons discouraging Nigerians from making payments for goods and services using point of sale (PoS) platform.
A new report released by Indexmundi, a finance ranking group has shown that after over three years of the introduction in Nigeria and less than three years in Ghana, only 21 percent of total transactions in the country are done through the PoS device as Ghana stood at 80.
Nigeria ranked seventh, leaving South Africa as lead on over 91 per cent.
According to report, Tunisia is third with 79 percent and as Egypt, Morocco and Kenya followed in that order before Nigeria.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), had late last year disclosed that PoS density per 100,000 people in Nigeria is 13, while India’s is 67; Uganda, 453; Namibia, 338
Though the target of the CBN is to meet Brazil’s PoS deployment rate of 2,247 per 100,000 people by 2020, but industry experts say the dream may not be met pending when all the listed hiccups are removed.
Giving more insights as to why Nigeria is far from the race to deepen ePayment, Kevin Chung of Avante International Technology, who spoke at the just concluded CashlessAfrica Expo in Lagos said even though bandwidth are adequate, data centres in the financial communities in Nigeria have not upgraded from Tier 1-2 to Tier 3-4 to enable the cash-less economy grow better.
