12 ATM’s Per 100,000 Nigerians not good for cash-less policy — Mr. Chris Ife

FOR the cashless policy introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to achieve its set goals, there must be in place, regular public education, functional infrastructure, harmonisation of monetary and fiscal policy and effective regulatory measures to protect bank clients from electronic fraud,  and among others.

The MD/CEO Globasure Technologies Limited Mr. Chis Ife  stated this when interviewed  by our Globasure news agents.

Mr. Chris Ife, said that the facilities and measures needed to be in place, because “80 per cent of the cash in Nigeria’s economy is still locked up in the hands of the economic participants in the informal sector.”

The MD/CEO  argued that although Nigerians, banks and the CBN stood to derive a lot of benefits from the use of electronic channels for transactions, the country still lagged behind the developed nations where the policy was fully operational, especially in the use of automated teller machines (ATMs), as only 12 ATMs were available to 100,000 Nigerians.

“Nigeria still lags behind many nations in the use of ATM and Points of Sale (PoS) terminals. While in the United States, 169 ATMs are available to 100,000 Americans, only 12 are used by 100,000 Nigerians.

“Currently there are between 18 and 20 million different types of cards in the hands of Nigerians (if the number of inactive issued cards is considered, this figure will exceed 30 million).

“There are over 120,000 POSs in use across Nigeria currently. CBN plans to deploy 350,000 by 2015, of which 150,000 will be done in 2013 alone.
“POS transaction grew from N100 million in May 2011, it has now reached N3.34 billion in May 2013 with over 7,000 transactions done daily (about N78 million per day). There are over 11,000 ATMs deployed nationwide.

“The ATM is still the most active (of electronic channels), indicating that our economy is still largely cash based. There were over 14 million cash withdrawals with a value of over N145 billion in the month of May, 2013,”  Mr Chris Ife , MD/CEO Globasure Technologies Limited, added.