The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that electronic transactions in Nigeria increased by 66 per cent year-on-year to N330 trillion in December 2021 from N198.61 trillion at the end of 2020.
Delivering a keynote address at a conference tagged “The Future of Payments and Fraud: Catching the Next New, organised by BusinessDay in Lagos on Thursday, May 12 the Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability CBN, Aishah Ahmad, said that the COVID-19 pandemic changed digitalisation by accelerating the shift to digital image platforms.
Ahmad who was represented by Deputy Director, Banking and Payments System Department at CBN, Taiwo Oladimeji, said;
“Innovation is acknowledged as an important lever to drive meaningful progress in this direction. While financial inclusion continues to improve in Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria has set an ambitious target and that is to achieve means for enabling competition within the fintech sector, which facilitates digital financial services.
Firstly, the need for new innovative players to be identified and licensed in order to bring them within the regulatory limits was highlighted. Also, creation of a framework to understand the markets for new players as more energy will attract opportunities and monitor changes in the monetary transmission mechanism.
The third one is to achieve financial inclusion and democratised access to quality, affordable and cost effective financial services for all Nigerians by resolving the challenges related to identity management, neutral financial access points into operability of payment systems, electronic payments, and open banking among others”.
