Nigerians make N9.2trn transactions over mobile devices in 7 months

This 7-months report shows an increase when compared to the figure for 2021 which showed the value of transactions carried out by mobile platforms for the whole year stood at N8 trillion.

The noticeable increase in mobile transactions had however, shown a contrasting amount of cheque transactions as it declined over the period in question.

Cheque transactions revealed a 31.42 percent decrease as the figure dropped from N2.67 trillion from January to July 2019, to N1.83 trillion in the corresponding period of 2022.

The use of mobile payment gateways became the favorite for most Nigerians during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, while the decline in the use of cheques also began around the same time.

The noticeable increase in mobile transactions has also been traced to the rising number of mobile connections across the country.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) report on active subscriptions for mobile services across the four major networks of MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile revealed that the figure of active subscribers rose by 10.9 million in the first six months of 2022.

This feat achieved by mobile financial users has also welcomed corresponding bad news as the number of fraudulent transactions have also increased during the period.

A NIBSS fraud report has revealed that there has been a 186% increase in financial frauds as the figures rose from 16,128 in 2019 to 46,126 in 2020.

The fraud report also revealed that the criminals are focusing more on the mobile payment system, hence, fraud attempts on mobile payment channels increased by 330% between January and September 2020.

The main target for the fraudsters are web payment and Point of Sales (PoS) channels both of which recorded 173% and 215% increase in fraud attempts during the period.