Nigerian Banks <i>Nigerians conducted electronic transactions in just four payment categories, summing up to N178 trillion in 2020 alone, a half bigger than the N119 trillion reported the year before.</sub>
Most Nigerian banks ironically lost e-business revenue in 2020 after the coronavirus crisis-induced lockdowns pushed more people online, with increased online payments and transfers, with only four of 12 banks reviewed recording increased e-business income.
Only Access, UBA, First Bank and Fidelity Bank made money that year compared to the previous 2019. Two of the biggest five — <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gtbank.com/">Guaranty Trust Bank</a> and Zenith Bank — lost big, with Zenith losing 37 per cent and GTB losing 25 per cent of their e-business revenue.
Taken together, the 12 banks recorded more e-business income in 2020 than they did the previous year.
E-Business
E-commerce is seeing a boom never before experienced in Nigeria, made possible by a buoyant consumer spending, a dynamic youth population (one of the largest in the world) and a smartphone revolution that seems to be erasing all social divides: the educated and the unlearned, the affluent and the poor, the young and the old, males and females.
Now at $12 billion, the market could balloon to $75 billion come 2025, according to an International Trade Administration <a target="_blank" href="https://www.trade.gov/knowledge-product/nigeria-ecommerce">forecast</a>, underscoring how digitalisation can radically transform bank-supported transactions and other payment processes in just a few years.
As the decade ticked to its end in 2020, the boom took a new turn on a scale so vast that the volume and value of electronic banking deals initiated by customers across payment channels outpaced the previous year’s and touched the farthest peak since Nigeria’s interbank settlement database began formal record in 2017.
Amid the pandemic, governments imposed lockdowns and other contact-forbidding measures. But COVID-19 has became a positive disruptive force that revolutionised the where, when and how people conduct everyday transactions, which are increasingly taking various do-it-yourself modes across e-channels.
With the growth rates of e-payment transaction volumes and values for 2020 far surpassing those of the preceding years across most channels and early data for 2021 even showing a more optimistic trend through higher volume and value levels January through May, there is no doubt e-banking has reached its breakout moment.
Nigerians conducted electronic transactions in just four payment categories (POS, E-Bills Pay, NIP and ACH) summing up to N178 trillion in 2020 alone, a half bigger than the N119 trillion reported the year before, according […]
