Over 15% Of Nigerian PoS Transactions Failing, Cryptocurrencies To The Rescue

Over 15% Of Nigerian PoS Transactions Failing, Cryptocurrencies To The Rescue

Nigerians continue to experience declined transactions on Point of Sales (PoS) terminals all over the country as Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) showed a high failure rate of 15.33 percent as the volume of failed transactions amount to 66,441.

This failure occurred despite the introduction of new efficiency methods in the banking industry. This situation illustrates a need for a more reliable form of payment like cryptocurrencies.

Niyi Ayo, the acting Managing Director of NIBBS explained the reason behind this failure being the turnaround time not aligned between the parties that are crucial to conducting a transaction,

“The total turn-around-time had been configured at 15 seconds in agreement with banks and processors. However, delayed responses from issuers after this timeout in recent times could cause authorised debits not to return to the terminal before the set TAT.”

In March, some of the remedial steps were taken that included adjusting the timeout that was first changed from 15 seconds to 20 seconds and then later on to 45 seconds.

Bank customers further expressed their concerns over the recurrent failure of transactions. What was more aggravating for customers was in most cases when the transactions on the PoS terminals failed, their accounts were debited and transactions were not reverted.

Bank customers carried out nearly three million transactions on Nigeria Interbank Settlement System Instant Pay platform on this Sunday.

Cryptocurrencies Are The Answer

Financial payment networks such as Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal play an integral role in our daily lives. These traditional systems lack competition that decentralized technologies can help in disrupting the financial sector that still lags behind in terms of fees and speed.

As recently shared in research by DataLight, Bitcoin could take over Visa and PayPal in the coming years.

“In just 10 years, Bitcoin has managed to compete with the leaders of the payment system industry. Bitcoin’s development is occurring exponentially… If it maintains this pace, in another 10 years, it will surpass all competition.”

Not to forget that cryptocurrencies like Ripple, Stellar and Dash are already working in the financial sector with tested results of fast speed and extremely low fees.

As cryptocurrencies gradually move into the mainstream, as have already been achieved by several of these digital currencies via partnerships, we would be seeing the development in the financial payments sector that is ripe for disruption and finally provides customers with the higher standard of services.