By Uche Mbah
Nigerians are gradually dumping the cheque system for online payment system in financial transactions as the data on cheque clearing through the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) is on continuous decline in favor of the e-banking system.
The NIBSS said cheque clearing for August 2020 stood at 392.965, a 34.23 percent fall, compared with 587.515 volume of check cleared in the same period of last year. In 2018 it was even lower: 685.571 cheques cleared a decline of 42.68% from what was cleared in the same period of August 2020.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday published data showing that 2,160,436,659 transactions valued at N263.78 trillion were done between April and June this year. Cheques transactions within the first three months of 2020 stood at 6,445,511 with a total value of N4.84 trillion.
Online transactions became more pronounced due to the influence of the lockdown, occasioned by the COVID 19 pandemic, and many Nigerians opted for international payments of their online business. It is estimated that a greater percentage of those who still use cheques are the elderly who are still steeped in analogue banking. Also, many Banking halls were closed during the lockdown.
In the first quarter of 2020, a total volume of 56,777,363 worth N67.48 trillion was transferred through NEFT, while in the second quarter, a total of 40,939,113 valued at N59.55 trillion was transferred.
This indicated that e-commerce, which the CBN has been trying to enforce through various policies, has been accelerated by COVID 19.
CBN has been trying to discourage cash transactions since 2014.
But Nigeria is still more of a cash-driven society due to the level of internet penetration among Nigerians, which is tied to poverty and literacy levels. But it may decline in anticipation of the often announced recession after the pandemic.
Nigeria’s economy had contracted 6.10 percent in the second quarter of 2020 from 1.87 percent growth in the first quarter of the year.
