Nigeria recorded a reduction in the value of transactions carried out over Point of Sale (PoS) terminals in the country in January. There was a NGN16 billion reduction in January this year compared to the figure achieved in December 2016, as Nigerians slowed shopping after the frenzy of the yuletide.
According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) which is the industry Payments Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA), value of transactions over the platform in December 2016 was N108 billion dropping to N91 billion in January this year. More so, volume of transactions was also affected as volume in December recorded 8.9million compared to 7.9 million it recorded in January this year.
Commenting on this development, experts believe that the situation is normal in view of the fact that December is a festive period when Nigerians make a lot of purchases for the Christmas and New Year celebrations. But in January, they noted that not much shopping is done at this period as people have exhausted their cash during the festivity. This is the reason for the drop in both transaction value and volume on the PoS platform.
They also observed that PoS is not the only channel for electronic payments as there are several other channels like the Mpos, mobile, ATMS, web/online, instant payments etc. so the PoS is one of many other choices.
