E-payment: Analysts stress importance of financial inclusion

The e-payment industry needs to adopt financial inclusion as a strategy for driving growth and profitability, industry analysts have said.

Experts, who spoke during a recently concluded annual conference of Committee of e-Banking Industry Heads, underscored the significance of the Central Bank of Nigeria-led cash-less policy drive in the growth recorded in the electronic payment sector lately.

They, however, said that the impressive growth recorded must be consolidated.

The CeBIH’s conference was entitled, “E-payment systems: Harnessing opportunities for growth and profitability.”

The CeBIH Chairman, Mr. Chuks Iku, said, “The theme is in line with the realities of today as banks in Nigeria are constantly seeking for ways to grow the use of electronic channels in a sustainable way.

The Executive Director, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc, Christabel Onyejekwe, stated that the huge number of people outside the financial system represented one of the opportunities that must be harnessed for growth.

As a result, he stressed that there was a huge opportunity for growth in the sector, pointing out the need to harness them.

The NIBSS boss said, “Only 28 per cent of our registered PoS are active. This is a meagre 31,000 active PoS out of the 158,000 out there, yet we have not even gone cash-less across Nigeria. Less than 20 per cent of rural Nigerians have been reached by the mobile money operators and more than 45 per cent of Nigerians have yet to be banked.

“These are veritable sources of growth and development for us as a whole and we believe that the PoS business can be improved on, mobile payment can be deepened and revitalised, and our drive for financial inclusion must be re-energised.”

An e-payment specialist with the World Bank, Mr. Robin Hofmeister, underscored the importance of “driving e-payments and financial inclusion through branchless banking,” identifying branchless banking as an effective tool of reaching millions of the under-banked and unbanked with electronic payment channels.

Defining branchless banking as the delivery of financial services outside conventional bank branches using information and communications technologies and retail agents, he stressed the importance of mobile phones as one of the most effective means of delivering e-payment to the unbanked.