Nigerians executed N356.4tr worth of e-transactions in three months

Despite the challenging economic environment, Nigerians carried out a total volume of 3,464,811,083 transactions valued at N356.47 trillion through Electronic Payment Channels in the last three months of 2020.

The National Bureau of Statistics disclosed this in the banking sector data released on Sunday.

According to NBS, online transfers dominated the banking activities last year with 2,227,449,949 transactions valued at N120.27 trillion carried out between October and December.

On a year-on-year comparison, the value of the transaction increased by 325 percent from N165.8 trillion in 2019 to N704.04 trillion last year.

While the volume of e-payment transactions rose YoY by 142 percent from 2.96 billion in 2019 to 7.16 billion in 2020.

E-payment transactions include the transaction made via the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System Instant Payment System (NIP) and Point of Sales terminals (PoS).

NIP transactions include internet banking, mobile apps, Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD).

The report also noted that banks’ credit to the private sector increased during the period.

Ripples Analysis showed that banks’ credit to the private sector increased by 121 percent to N77.53 trillion in 2020 from N64.11 trillion in 2019.

In terms of credit to the private sector, the total value of credit allocated by the bank stood at N20.37 trillion as of Q4’20.

Oil and gas and manufacturing sectors got credit allocation of N3.93 trillion and N3.19 trillion respectively to record the highest credit allocation at the period under review.