Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc on Wednesday said it realised N3.8bn in gross earnings for the financial year ended June 30, 2013.

The Chairman, NIBSS, Mr. Tunde Lemo, said this at the company’s Annual General Meeting in Lagos.

According to him, the company’s gross earnings for 2013 represent a 52 per cent increase on the N2.56bn it realised in the previous year.

Lemo said NIBSS’ profit before tax also appreciated, rising by 37.8 per cent from N585m in 2012 to N807m.

He added that the “total assets growth remained steady at 20 per cent as recorded in the preceding year” with shareholders’ fund growing by 17 per cent as against 12 per cent in 2012.

Lemo explained that the company’s growth was as a result of sustained product enhancement due to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s cash-less policy, aimed at strengthening the nation’s payment and settlement system.

The NIBSS chairman, who stressed that the partnership the company had with SIBS International of Portugal also helped, stressed that the growth in PBT was due to the provision of N543m for net impairment loss on placement with Express Discount Limited; relative to a provision of N2m in 2012, among other things.

According to Lemo, the Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard certification of the NIBSS in March, 2013 further strengthened the company’s payment terminal service aggregator function, as PCI-DSS certification guarantees customers’ protection against data breaches.

Also, he said an improvement in the industry’s adoption of NIBSS instant payment and point of sale terminal, further enhanced the company’s performance in the year under review.

He said, “NIP surpassed one million transaction volumes in May 2013, with assured growth momentum, as more bank customers utilise the service and enjoy the associated benefits of security and speed of service on various financial institutions’ service delivery channel.

“The increasing adoption of mobile payments offers another veritable avenue for a greater appreciation of your company as inalienable ally of critical players in the Nigerian financial system.”

 He added that the decision of the company to begin a nationwide deployment of the cheque truncation system on June 3, 2013, helped to improve the clearing cycle for paper-based financial instruments by reducing the clearing cycle for local cheque from T+2 to T+1.

The NIBSS was established in 1992 by the decision of the Banker’s Committee as the Banking Industry Shared Service, to help streamline inter-bank payments in Nigeria. It is owned by all licensed banks in Nigeria and the CBN.

Source: Punch (by Simon Ejembi)