What You Should Know as PoS Operators Come under Govt. Surveillance

As of 2022, the Nigerian Fintech Report 2023, said Nigeria had 1.5 million PoS terminals—or operators. The figure from the NBSS differed: 2.3 million operators got the license. In all, between 1.5 million and 1.8 million license holders were operating as of 2022.

Not much detail came clear all these, for sure.

That opacity in some aspects of the agent-banking sector has dredged up all kinds of suspicions and allegations.

The federal government believes the sector is aiding money transfers for those in the kidnap and ransom crime. It’s time to track them, using the agency of the Corporate Affairs Commission.

That may take some effort, though the mom-and-pop agent banks have two months to register as corporate bodies.

There are 19 of such companies that have the license to operate agent banking. The popular ones include Opay, Moniepoint, Pagatech Limited, Palmpay Limited, Chams Mobile Limited , eTranzact International Limited, Fortis Mobile Money Limited . Others include Parkway Projects Limited, Abeg Technologies Limited, Funds And Electronic Transfer (FETS) Limited, Hedonmark Management Services Limited, among others.

But Opay tops the list in terms of agents. No fewer than 563,000 operate its PoS terminals across Nigeria. Moniepoint follows, with over 303,000 agents.

As for spread, Lagos, among the first four, has 322,000 of the agents; Abuja, 101,000;  Ogun 88,000; and Abia 78,000.

These operators ramped up the volume and value of transactions in the sector in about a decade. About 26 million transactions amounted to N0.05 trillion in 2012, the report stated. By 2021, the volume rose to 95 million transactions, with value hitting N6.4 trillion.

These figures are still rising. So it gets easy to understand the fluidity that makes the sector a hiding place for crooks.

The Central Bank of Nigeria recently banned Opay, Moniepoint, and Kuda from taking on more customers. They have to  firm up their KYC policies and others.

Hussain Magaji, CAC boss said, the platform has come on live for the registration. “If a crime were committed using the PoS, the government would easily trace the perpetrators,” he said.