The Six banks are:

1. Access Holdings PLC
2. GTCO
3. Zenith Bank
4. UBA
5. Stanbic IBTC Bank
6. Wema Bank

The lenders saw their income from electronic transactions rise by 43.73 percent to N331.61 billion, according to their financial statements, underscoring the shift in the country’s payment landscape.

For instance, Access Holdings Plc, the parent company of Access Bank, spent the most (N78.05 billion) on IT last year. While Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO), the owner of GTBank, increased its IT expenses to N50.24 billion, while Zenith Bank spent N33.59 billion.

But the  United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) spent N23.19 billion; Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, N19.34 billion; and Wema Bank did N1.42 billion respectively.

UBA reported the most electronic banking income of N125.58 billion. Access earned N101.62 billion from electronic transactions; Zenith, N51.82 billion; GTCO, N40.83 billion; Wema, N7.35 billion; and Stanbic, N4.42 billion.

E-payment has surged in Nigeria in recent years. According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, electronic payments grew by 54.55 percent year-on-year to N611.06 trillion in 2023 from N395.38 trillion in 2022.Instant payment channels, including mobile, recorded a usage volume of 9.67 billion.

Cashless transactions in the country have been partly boosted by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) botched naira redesign policy and withdrawal limits introduced in December 2022.

The country aims to go cashless, with the CBN, in a ‘Payments Vision 2025’ document, predicting that the use of cash payment should have lessened by 2025. Most of these online transactions are expected to be facilitated by banks and fintechs

By 2025, the apex bank expects the country to have a cashless and efficient electronic payment system infrastructure.

“As we implement the PSV 2025 agenda, the CBN will continue to ensure that the Nigerian payments system is widely utilised domestically, supports government’s financial inclusion objectives, and meets international standards while contributing to overall national economic growth and development of Nigeria,” the CBN said.

As banks go online, failed transactions and system glitches have become rampant, with customers constantly taking to social media to complain.

In 2023, online banking downtime nearly became a norm, and many customers of a tier-one bank were recently shut out from their apps.

“We understand that you rely on the availability of our services to carry out transactions that are important to your daily lives and your business operations, which is why we take very personally our commitment to continuously deploy resources to ensure that our service uptime is 100 percent, round the clock, every day of the week,” GTBank said on Monday.

“Unfortunately, we experienced an unusual power surge. We immediately set to work to minimise the impact of this unexpected surge on our services, and we were able to get our channels back up.

In 2023, the World Bank stated that Nigeria’s digital and financial infrastructure was still inadequate to support a swift shift to a cashless economy

Banks’ IT spending is expected to continue rising because of the anticipated increase in cashless transactions in the country.

Femi Adeoti, group managing director of RoutePay, said recently:

“We realised that Nigeria’s current banking and digital payment infrastructure is inadequate to cater to the expected growth in the volume of digital/electronic-based transactions.”

Regional director for Central Africa and Anglophone West Africa at the International Finance Corporation, Dahlia Khalifa, said recently that fintech is driving the transformation of Nigeria’s traditional banking systems at an unprecedented pace, increasing the reach and efficiency of financial services in the country.

“Through mobile banking, digital payments, and other innovations, fintech is extending financial services to previously underserved communities, driving financial inclusion and widening economic opportunities,” Khalifa said.

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RoutePay products and services are omnichannel—available across all channels of payment, including the web, mobile, POS, ATM, USSD, etc. It also has an array of products and services targeting different market segments based on demography, inclinations, and leanings.

With this full approval, Routepay is certified to have met all of the CBN’s requirements.

“We are pleased to inform you that the CBN has approved the issuance of a license to operate under the Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) in Nigeria,” the apex bank said in a letter to RoutePay titled “Payment Solution Service Licence Category” and dated January 12, 2023.

The CBN approval came after a thorough review and update, including an on-the-spot assessment of the fintech firm’s facilities to ensure that it met developments in the payment ecosystem. Last year, the CBN granted RoutePay Approval In Principle (AIP).

RoutePay is managed by a team of astute professionals with deep knowledge and understanding of Nigeria’s digital payment systems, according to Mr. Femi Adeoti (group managing director and former managing director of Inlaks). “The CBN approval validates the firm’s trustworthiness in the financial services industry,” Adeoti said.

Adeoti stated that Routepay is poised to ensure that “digital payment solutions are made possible and available in our environment without hassles,” citing the growing need for improved processes, services, products, and accessibility in the digital payment and financial technology industries.

Speaking about the approval, Routepay’s CEO, Abayomi Olomu, stated that the company is very intentional about driving digital payment transformation in a changing and demanding world. He goes on to say that the organization’s diverse products will strengthen connections between parties in the payment space by focusing on eliminating pain points and improving customer satisfaction.

According to him, pain points range from issues of channel reliability to specific issues of trust; he explains that some people will still refuse to use their cards for online payments due to concerns about fraud, etc., while others are concerned about the cost of using payment channels.

This, he said, could be partly responsible for the low rate of adoption despite all the awareness, products, services, government policies, and investment in this sector. According to him, in spite of the number of service providers in the financial technology and digital payments space, more than 85 percent of transactions are still done via cash.

“All these concerns and many others are what we have termed as pain points and RoutePay is all out to fix them in very innovative ways. We are deploying an intelligent customer experience survey system to capture feedback from users from time to time so as to constantly adjust our services, processes, and products to meet the users’ expectations.

“We are making digital payment products and services available to all and sundry regardless of their exposure, technology awareness, location, age, affluence, and education.

The post RoutePay Receives CBN Licence to Provide Digital Payment Solutions appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.