APRIL 10, 2012 BY DAYO OKETOLA
Mobile money service is gradually gaining acceptance in the country as 14 mobile payment operators licensed in August 2011 by the Central Bank of Nigeria recorded 35,971 transactions in January, 2012.
The Head, Shared Services, CBN, Mr. Chidi Umeano, who disclosed this during the 5th West African Convergence Forum organised by IT Edge recently in Lagos, said the value of the 35,971 was N227.92m.
He said, “14 mobile payment operators licensed in August 2011 recorded 35,971 transactions valued at N227.92m ($1.4m) in January 2012. This is expected to grow geometrically as awareness increases.”
Umeano stated that the cash-less society project was gaining traction especially with support from the Federal Government and Lagos State, adding that deployed and active Point of Sale terminal had grown from 5,300 as at June 2011 to 18,874 as at March 4, 2012.
According to him, another 54,086 (up from 31,052) PS terminals have already been registered.
He said, “All stakeholders are galvanised in ensuring a success of the programme and CBN at the top level maintains an active engagement with all to ensure seamless transition to our desired cash-Less society.”
Investigation by The PUNCH had revealed that the mobile money market in Nigeria has the capacity for N1.17tn worth of transactions in six months.
This is, however, tied to the availability of the 250,000 agent locations required to make the service available to the country’s over 80 million unbanked population.
The emerging mobile money industry currently lacks the requiste agent locations required to deepen the services’ penetration across all nooks and cranies of the country.
The PUNCH has found that the operators licensed by the CBN to roll out mobile money networks currently rely on about 1,000 agents across the country, which are grossly inadequate.
Though efforts are being made to increase this to 50,000 by the end of 2012 and subsequently to 250,000 soon after, investigation revealed that a whopping sum of N6.5bn transactions can be done across the 250,000 agent locations daily if attained.
This stems from the fact that a single location with one Point of Sale terminal is expected to generate an average of N26, 000 transactions daily.
However, factors such as location, number of terminals and customer population can either reduce the figure to as low as N11, 700 or increase to as much as N40, 000 a day per agent location.
At an average income assumption of N26, 000 per agent location and N6.5bn combined daily transaction volume, the industry can record N195bn transactions in one month and a whopping N1.17bn in six months.
The Director, One Network, an industry-focused organisation helping to expand agent networks to 50,000 this year, Mr. Sola Bickersteth, who corroborated The PUNCH investigation, said, “The mobile money industry requires an estimated 250,000 or one agent per 3,000. These agents will operate like a financial and citizen services supermarket for their neighbourhood of 3,000 or more. Each location has an N11, 700 potential income assuming the agent is averagely engaged with a customer every five minutes daily.
“However, some locations may only get three customers in an hour and may not get more than N4, 000 daily. In the same vein, some very good locations will have customers actually queuing up for their turn, such locations can earn up to N40, 000 daily. Of course, such locations are likely to acquire more terminals to meet up with customers’ demands.”
Also, the Managing Director, Fortis Mobile Money, one of the licensed mobile money service providers, Mr. Henry Nwawuba, said, “Mobile money will also increase business volume at agent locations by creating cross-selling opportunities and increased traffic footfalls. It will surely facilitate the creation of employment especially because of its strong agency banking component which requires business outlets to provide mobile money services.”
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