The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has reported that bank customers transferred a total of N19.4 trillion over mobile devices last year, representing a 142% surge year-on-year (Y-o-Y) when compared to the N8 trillion mobile transactions in the preceding year.
The agency also disclosed that the volume of mobile inter-scheme transactions rose by 151% year-on-year from 284.5 million recorded in 2021 to 609 million in 2022 while the value of bills (E-Bills) transactions increased to N2.8 trillion last year, representing a 53% increase over the N2.3 trillion recorded in 2021.
The E-Bills Pay is an account-based, online real-time platform that facilitates the payment of bills from an account and ensures instant credit of payments and receipts of collections on behalf of billers/merchants recruited on it.
The platform is currently being used for payments on utility bills, hotel and airline bookings, cable TV subscriptions, school fees, and airtime top-ups, amongst others.
The NIBSS data indicated that more Nigerians were now embracing payment of bills electronically based on the increasing surge in use of mobile devices for financial transactions as telecommunications Mobile National Operators (MNOs) are deepening the deployment of new technologies to boost their networks nationwide.
For instance, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently published that active subscriptions for mobile services across the networks of MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9Mobile in November 2022 increased by 19.2 million between January and October this year.
But analysts noted that despite the improved telecom services benefits, especially on mobile transactions, a just published NIBSS’ fraud report in 2020 showed that fraudsters were also exploring the benefits of the E-Bills Pay platform to conduct fraudulent transactions.
Specifically, the NIBSS’ report indicated that fraud attempts on mobile increased by 330% between January and September of the year.
