The POS (Point of Sale) failure rate in Nigeria remains high – double digit – and averaging 15% per day. We have also seen 25% failure rate during peak periods. The NIBSS POS Live data show a big concern: failure rate is still rising despite the promises. I do believe that most debit card users try to pay for things from unfunded accounts, returning failed transactions. Yet, the infrastructure challenges remain and could be contributing to the increasing failure rate. If merchants believe the thing is not working, they will just toss the terminals for cash – a big something to worry about. The regulators and NIBSS must get to work to fix this increasing failure rate.
Meanwhile, checks by our correspondent showed that PoS transactions recorded a high failure rate of 29.23 per cent as of 2.59pm on Monday, in which about 157,034 transactions have been declined.
Transactions on PoS terminals in the country have consistently recorded high failure rate above 15 per cent in the past one month.
Meanwhile, POS is doing great on volume of transactions and total amount transacted.
Nigeria Needs Fingerprint-Based Debit Cards with Contactless POS Terminals
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“I do believe that most debit card users try to pay for things from unfunded accounts, returning failed transactions.” Is it that people just slot in the card and then close their eyes, hoping for miracle, even when they don’t have money in the account? This should be minimal among the issues. The POS technology has refused to be efficient here, just like many things else; whenever Nigeria gets involved, the level drops. Even websites from big organisations here still struggle with handling decent amount of traffic. We just need to have another good alternative technology to POS here, it’s obvious that the system is overwhelmed. QR code technology could provide an efficient and better alternative.
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