The value of transactions through Point of Sale (PoS) terminals jumped by 79.03 per cent, or N8.29 trillion, to N18.78 trillion in the first three months of 2026 compared with N10.49 trillion in the corresponding period of last year, findings by New Telegraph show.

According to data obtained from Financial Derivatives Company Limited (FDC), which is sourced from the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), the value of PoS transactions stood at N6.08 trillion in January 2026; N6.58 trillion in February and N6.12 trillion in March.

Although the value of PoS transactions declined in March compared with the figure recorded for February, data obtained from NIBSS shows that the value of electronic payment transactions has generally maintained an upward trend in recent years occasioned by increased adoption of e-payment channels in the country.

Indeed, the data indicates that the value of e-payment transactions hit a record N1.07 quadrillion in 2024 compared with N6003.36 trillion in the previous year.

Analysts attribute increased adoption of e-payment channels to factors, such as the CBN’s initiatives to promote the cashless policy, the impact of the 2020 Covid-19 crisis and the naira redesign programme introduced by the apex bank in late 2022.

For instance, in its “Instant Payments 2020 Annual Statistics, NIBSS stated that: “The pandemic changed the e-payments landscape, accelerating the adoption of instant payments as more people transitioned to electronic channels for funds exchange in the wake of government imposed lockdowns.

Furthermore, implementation challenges with the CBN’s naira redesign policy led to an acute shortage of cash, which crippled economic activities across the country in the first quarter of 2023, thereby compelling bank customers, who were unable to access cash at the time, to adopt e-payment channels.

Although the regulator later abandoned the naira redesign policy, analysts believe that the challenges occasioned by its implementation pushed many bank customers into embracing banking agents, also known as PoS operators.

The development was the major driver of the significant increase in the number of PoS terminals deployed across the country by financial institutions in recent years.

According to NIBSS data, deployed PoS terminals rose by 127.07 per cent to hit a record 5.56 million as at the end of December 2024, compared with 2.45 million in the corresponding period of the previous year.

5.56 million Being the number of PoS terminals deployed across the country as at December 2024

This means that a total of 3.11 million PoS terminals were deployed across the country in 2024. The NIBSS data also shows that the value of PoS transactions rose by 69 per cent to N18 trillion in 2024, from N10.74 trillion in 2023.

In fact, PoS agents have become a central part of the country’s cash economy, with many bank customers almost entirely reliant on them for services such as cash withdrawals, transfers and the payment of bills.

However, in what analysts said was a move to address the sharp increase in fraud incidents that also with the surge in deployed PoS terminals, the CBN in August, last year, introduced new operational guidelines for agent banking across the country, which saw the regulator capping daily cumulative transactions per agent at N1.2 million and N100,000 for individual customers. It also directed that all PoS terminals in the country must be geotagged within sixty days.

Published in The New Telegraph