The Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Sanusi Lamido, has said that the Bankers’ Committee is currently working with the Nigerian Communications Commission and other service providers to ensure that some of the challenges of cash-less policy are addressed.
Sanusi said this at the fourth annual investors’ forum organised by Renaissance Capital in Lagos.
He said that the numbers recorded in terms of Points of Sale, Automated Teller Machines were very remarkable.
He said, “We started last year with 5, 000 PoS machines, we ended the year with 165,000 PoS machines. Mobile banking for example, in January was doing N4m per month, by December last year, it went up to N8bn. It is moving up and we hope it continues.”
Sanusi identified telecommunication as a major challenge encountered by the cash-less policy.
He said, “If you want to move data, for example, you need more bandwidth. It is not enough to have PoS terminals, or to have ATMs, there is need to expand the bandwidth.
“There are operational issues, you will be amazed that you do a transaction on the PoS and you have operational issues because the name doesn’t match. So these are all small things that we discovered. We can say that we are not where we want to be, but definitely we are inching closer and we will get there.”