Omodele Adigun
Network disruptions and glitches as well as banks and customers’ errors accounted for the failure of 695,576 Points of Sale (PoS ) transactions at the weekend as the Muslim faithful observed their Eid-El-Kabir celebration.
Data obtained from the live transaction updates of the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) also indicated that the transactions failed during peak periods and festive seasons as 309,016, out of 1.3 million transactions done, failed at the PoS terminals by 4pm on Friday. This represented about 23.8 per cent of the activities. However, the following day, Saturday, the failure rate scaled down to 17 per cent as 385,960, out of 2.27 million transactions, were declined .
Analysis of the failure rate, according to the data, showed that the issuer banks contributed the most to the two-day botched transactions as 68,697 and 32,230 were attributed to the errors on their platforms.
This was closely followed by errors emanating from the customers’ end, which accounted for 37,034 and 65,619 of failed payments on Friday and Saturday respectively.
The statistics also indicated that 33,260 and 45,099 errors emanated from the acquirer banks and 19,728 and 74,000 errors, which originated from the processors, also contributed significantly to the failed funds transfer and payments carried out by retailers and merchants.
Last month, the value of transactions done across PoS channels in Nigeria increased from N1.14 trillion, recorded between January and May 2019. to N1.64 trillion within the same period in 2020, while the value of transactions from PoS machines rose by N500 billion, representing an increase of 43.8 per cent in the five months.
The total volume of PoS transactions also increased from 152.6 million to 228.86 million within the period. This indicates that the volume increased by 76.26 million, or 49.9 per cent.
The development indicates that some of the failed transactions stemmed from network disruptions and technology glitches. It is also an indication that the transactions declined during peak transaction periods and festive seasons.