The Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) has noted that there is still more to do by all stakeholders in the quest for 80 per cent financial inclusion rate by 2020, especially as cash continue to dominate transactions in the country.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, NIBSS, Ade Shonubi at the re-launch of mCash in Lagos, said that cash-less initiative is all about financial inclusion.
According to him, the idea behind the mCash was to make transactions easier and replace the use of physical cash, noting that to realise such, “we needed to sit down with a number of parties, because every individual element in the chain has a part to play.”
It is targeted at the lower value of transactions in efforts to do away with some fees that we normally charge people and the banks said they would give access to their customers and NIBSS would not charge any fee for the USSD.
He said that all those conversations are about how to get people to reduce cash-based deals and find other ways of doing financial transactions, which involves two kinds of people- the buyer and the seller and both parties have to be comfortable for it to work.
“So far, banks have done a good job, but not a great job.
We needed to get across to the customers who are the consumers and that required the channels that only the network providers could put down.
And collectively, the network providers, the banks and the various companies came together and the idea of mCash came in.
“Many times you hear people talk about unique solutions in the world, but over the last two years, we have been creating our own unique blend of what is possible in the world,” he said.
In a keynote address, the Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Bank, Uzoma Dozie, who was represented by the Deputy Managing Director Diamond Bank, Mrs. Caroline Anyanwu, said mCash is a mobile USSD technology.
By this, it is not like the mobile app that requires the use of smart phone, but any phone can do it and the most important thing a lot of businesses are looking at is the immediate receipt of payment.
“Prior to the mCash, users of payment solutions face a number of charges and are technology phobia, but the new scheme comes cheap, secure and would significantly increase the volume of mobile payments in Nigeria,” the banker said.