The value of transactions on point of sales terminals across the country totalled N1.01tn in the first three months of the year.
Industry statistics from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Scheme showed that in January 2020, N313.43bn worth of transactions was carried out, an amount which is 41 per cent higher than the N222.92bn recorded in January 2019.
In February 2020, the value grew by 69 per cent from N193.43bn in 2019 to N326.03bn.
In March 2020, N368.86bn worth of transactions were conducted, an amount which is 70 per cent higher than the N217.46bn recorded in 2019.
Out of a total of 470,122 terminals registered by Nigerian banks, only 305,725 had been deployed for use as of March, NIBSS data showed.
The number of inactive PoS terminals in the country had reached 164,397 as of April 2019.
Also, the volume of the PoS transactions in the first quarter of the year totalled 139.63 million.
In January, the total of volume of PoS payments was 41.30 million; 46.07 million in February and 52.25 million in March 2020.
Stakeholders in the industry have attributed the growth in transactions on the PoS terminals to the expansion of agent bankers across the country.
The Shared Agency Network Expansion facility has pledged to increase the number of agents to 500,000 across the six geopolitical regions by 2020.
The facility said it was prioritising the northern region due to the concentration of financially-excluded persons in the region.
The Chief Executive Officer of Enhancing Financial Innovation Access, Mr Essaie Diei, recently said that a 2018 survey the development agency carried out discovered that 63.2 per cent of adults in Nigeria were financially included.
