Indications that Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN’s) efforts to digitalize the nation’s payment system and achieve a cashless economy are yielding the desired results have emerged with the electronic payment (E-payment) transactions’ value hitting over N600 trillion in 2023.
The 2023 e-transactions value represented a huge surge from the N387 trillion transactions recorded in 2022, representing an increase of 55% year-on-year (Y-o-Y)
Available data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the volume of the transactions volume also soared by 90% from N5.1 billion in 2022 to N9.7 billion in 2023.
The NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) data also reflected that during the year under review, there was a monthly increase in the value of transactions from January to December, with the last month of the year recording the highest N71.9 trillion e-payments value.
The NIBSS’ e-payment platform indicators showed that the volume of e-payments reached record-high of N1.1 billion transactions in March 2023.
The NIBSS further clarified: “However, it is worth mentioning that the total value of e-payments in March did not surpass the amount recorded in December of the same year.”
It would be recalled that the surge in e-payments coincided with a period of cash scarcity in Nigeria when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ordered the withdrawal of high denomination currencies from the economy and minted new Naira notes, thereby forcing millions of Nigerians to rely on electronic channels for their transactions.
