eTranzact Limited, the first award winning multi-application and multi-channel electronic transaction switching and payment processing platform has etched its name in the history book with Nigeria’s first short message service based point of sale (POS) terminal for mobile payments.
Valentine Obi, managing director, eTranzact, said the device will be deployed at merchant locations from next month. He added that the deployment of the PoS running on USSD access channel is meant to provide alternative platform for consumers making purchase at merchant locations who could not use PoS that accept cards because of network challenges.
It would be recalled that stakeholders in the e-payment space have identified communications link as major challenge in the use and adoption of PoS in the country.
Card accepting Point of Sale terminals run on general package radio service (GPRS) and the deployment of SMS base PoS is believed to be address some of the challenges of communications link associated with GPRS based PoS.
The cashless policy of CBN commenced in Lagos as a pilot scheme is expected to be extended to other major cities later this year. According to the cashless policy individual and corporate customers is restricted to free daily cumulative cash withdrawals and lodging of N150,000 and N million respectively, but later revised to N500,000 and N3 million. The policy, which was jointly formulated by CBN and the Bankers Committee, is intended to help in reducing the dominance of cash in the economy.
More so, there are 100,000 PoS terminals deployed at merchant locations for payment of transactions as at September last year and the figure does not include terminals deployed at bank branches which are designated for lodgment confirmation as well as fund transfer.
Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer, and mobile wallet generally refer to payment services operated under financial regulation and performed from or via a mobile device.
Instead of paying with cash, check, or credit cards, a consumer can use a mobile phone to pay for a wide range of services and digital or hard goods.
In developing countries mobile payment solutions have been deployed as a means of extending financial services to the community known as the “unbanked” or “underbanked,” which is estimated to be as much as 50% of the world’s adult population, according to Financial Access’ 2009 Report “Half the World is Unbanked”
[As seen on Mobile Money Africa]
