Naira Crisis: Nigerians turn to Payment Service Providers as bank networks fail

According to a report by the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, most of the customers who complained noted that recently, online services from commercial banks have been disappointing thus their reason for migrating to the PSPs.

The PSP is a new banking category that operates on a smaller scale without credit risk and foreign exchange operations. 

They offer current and savings account types, payments, and remittance services, and also issue debit and prepaid cards, for their customers.

They have also been licenced to deploy Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and other technology-enabled banking services like end-to-end electronic payment solutions to stakeholders within the financial industry.

Some of the PSPs the customers migrated to include Opay, PalmPay, Kuda bank, etc.

Recently, commercial banks have been accused of not doing enough to strengthen their electronic transactions, a situation that has been seen to frustrate bank customers ever since the FG started implementing the Naira redesign policy.

The policy has made Nigerians rely more on online financial transactions due to limited cash in circulation.

According to the Vanguard, the National Association of Telecom Subscribers (NATCOMS), an advocacy group, also joined to call out the commercial banks blaming them for all failed and unsuccessful financial transactions.

Recall the CBN had released a list of Payment Service Providers (PSPs) licenced under categories like Card/Payments Scheme, Mobile Money operator, Switching and Processing, Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) Authorisation, Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) and Super-Agent authorisation.

Seven companies including three Line Card Management Ltd, American Express International, Mastercard International (Mastercard), Payattitude, and UnionPay International were licenced under the card/payments scheme.

The CBN also approved licences to 15 companies including Chams Mobile, Etranzact International Ltd, Fortis Mobile Money Ltd, Digital Services Ltd, Pagatech Ltd., Palmpay Ltd. Parkway Projects Ltd, Mkudi Ltd, NowNow Digital Services Ltd., and Paycom Nigeria Ltd. for the mobile money operator scheme

Nine companies also received licences under the Switching and Processing category while 30 companies were licenced under the Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) Authorisation.

15 companies received licenses under the Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) and 16 companies were licenced under the Super-Agent authorisation scheme.