The Central Bank of Nigeria has said that Lagos State, five other and the Federal Capital Territory control about 90 per cent of cash transactions in the country.

The other states, according to the apex bank, are Rivers, Anambra, Abia, Kano, Ogun.

The Deputy Governor, Operations, CBN, Mr. Tunde Lemo, said in a statement obtained by our correspondent on Friday that this was the reason the states were being slated for the second phase of the cash-less project  starting  on July 1st.

While acknowledging that there were still challenges with the cash-less project, he, however, said most of them were being resolved.

He listed one of the major challenges to include interconnectivity in some of the clusters, which he saidwas being addressed.

Lemo said that besides the use of alternative channels of transactions such as Point of Sales, the cash-less project would be driven through the telephone, stating that Nigeria was second in number of mobile phone users in sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa, which is also the largest economy in the region.

Lemo added that the cash-less policy had been successful in Lagos, saying that the number of PoS machines in Lagos had increased significantly from about 5,000 when the policy took off last year, to over 150,000.

“We still have a few challenges, but if I look back, I really would say that we have done a lot to transform the payment system in Lagos through PoS,” he said.

The Chief Executive Officer, Electronic Payment Providers Association of Nigeria, Mrs. Onajite Regha, said last week that the coming on board on the next phase of the cash-less policy in July might raise the value of electronic funds transfer in the country to N160bn per day by the end of the year.

The E-PPAN boss, who spoke in Lagos, said the current value of electronic fund transfers – put at N80bn per day by the CBN, would most likely double because there would be a lot of changes, which would compel people to use e-Fund transfer channels.

The Nigeria Interbank Settlement System is handling transactions worth about N20bn daily, while the Nigeria Electronic Funds Transfer is conducting about N60bn worth of transactions daily.

NIBSS provides the infrastructure for automated processing, settlement of payments and fund transfer instructions between banks, discount houses and card companies in Nigeria.

Regha said, “By the time we do six months into the new phase, the figure is likely going to rise by over 100 per cent. All these places we are going to are places where cash is moved heavily. We are looking at six additional commercial centres. We should, therefore, not forget that right now, it is only Lagos that is functional.”

Source: Punch (by Ademola Alawiye)