By Babajide Komolafe

The Bankers’ Committee said that it was aware of teething problems associated with Point of Sale (PoS) transactions in the implementation of the cashless policy.

The Committee, however, said these problems would soon be overcome, pleading with the public to show understanding and continue to support the policy.

The policy is to promote the use of electronic payment channels like the PoS to pay for goods and services, as against the present use of cash to pay for almost everything in the country.

One of the critical selling points of the policy is massive deployment of PoS across the state. These are box-like little devices that allows payment for goods and services using ATM cards. The CBN promised to deploy 40,000 PoS across the state. It assured that with this deployment, there would be little need to carry cash around to pay for goods and services.

CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

While the PoS deployment could not be achieved before the January 1commencement of the Cashless Lagos pilot run, investigation revealed that there is an increasing number of PoS in many shopping outlets and commercial centres, indicating that banks are stepping up deployment in preparation for the March 31 deadline for application of the cash limits.

The challenge, however, is that most of these PoS terminals may not work when the customer wants to pay. Managing Directors/Chief Executives of Access Bank and UBA PLC said that the Committee is aware of these challenges which are expected  at the beginning of a major initiative.

“We noted that when you start a major initiative, you might have early teething challenges here and there,” said Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede  in a press briefing at the end of the Bankers’ Committee meeting on Tuesday in Lagos.

He explained the inability of the deployed PoS terminals to work as follows: “The issue of bandwidth (for PoS telecommunication) is one that we are looking at. Obviously, we found that PoS works better with fixed lines but you know the status of  fixed lines infrastructure in Nigeria, that is why we still have to use wireless telephony. That means of course that we are very reliant on bandwidth.

So sometimes you can go to a merchant outlet and find that the PoS is not working, it is not because the PoS is not working,  it is a bandwidth problem. That is why we have to work with the various arms of government to make sure the infrastructure has to be in place.”

Also speaking at the briefing, Group Managing Director/Chief Executive, UBA PLC said: “We don’t see a postponement of the  deadline for the application of the charges.

“Regarding the bandwidth, a lot of work has been done on that, and we have built what you call multiple redundancies such that if there is a failure at a particular end, an automatic back-up comes up. In this instance, we have decided to partner with Globacom for primary connectivity and it is through GPRS.

In the event that there is a failure on the Globacom network, MTN kicks in because MTN is the back-up link. Like I said initially, you’ve seen some little bit of instability but gradually, we would be able to achieve stability.