TheCable

The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) says the total value of instant payments in 2023 was N600.36 trillion.

Instant payment is an account-based, real-time electronic funds transfer (EFT) platform. It enables financial institutions to provide online real-time funds transfer services to their customers through all available electronic channels.

According to data by NIBSS, the figure represents an increase of 55 percent or N213.29 trillion.

A total of  N387.07 trillion was recorded as instant payments (NIP) in 2022, the data said.

A breakdown of the data showed that the value of instant payments increased significantly to N71.95 trillion in December 2023 from N42.02 trillion recorded in the same month the previous year.

In terms of volume, instant payment transactions also increased, and had an all-time high record of 1.1 billion in March 2023, but declined to 968.59 billion at the end of last year.

The NIBSS data linked the surge in volume in March to the naira scarcity experienced in the country — an event that forced many Nigerians to adopt electronic payment channels.

Meanwhile, the data also showed that cashless transactions surged to N611.06 trillion in 2023, representing a significant increase of 54.55 percent or N215.68 trillion, compared to the N395.38 trillion recorded in 2022.

The NIBSS data further revealed an increase of 75.96 percent (11.05 billion transactions) in the use of electronic payment channels in 2023.

The NIBSS said Nigerians used point of sales (PoS) channels 1.38 billion times, amounting to N10.7 trillion transacted in 2023.

Also, the firm said mobile money operators (MMOs) such as Opay, Palmpay, Moniepoint, and Kuda had recorded N46.6 trillion transactions in 2023.

This figure, NIBSS said, is the highest mobile money transactions recorded, relative to the N19.4 trillion transactions recorded in 2022 — up by 140 percent.

NIBSS data also showed that the volume of mobile money (MMO) transactions skyrocketed by 326 percent in 2023.

In the year under review, the volume of MMO transactions stood at 3.04 billion compared to the 714 million volume recorded in 2022.