…As active bank accounts rise to 311.6 million
By Charles Ebi
Electronic payment transactions in Nigeria rose to N1.07 quadrillion in 2024, reaching an all-time high and the first time to hit the quadrillion mark.
In dollar terms, this is about $702.6 billion based on the closing exchange rate of N1,535/$1 on December 31, 2024.
According to the data released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System ,NIBSS, the value recorded on the NIBSS Instant Payment ,NIP, represents a 79.6% increase over the N600 trillion recorded in 2023.
While the e-payment data shows a steady increase throughout the 12 months of the year, the highest value was recorded in December.
Being a festive period with lots of spending activities, Nigerians spent a total of N115.1 trillion over electronic channels in December 2024.
This came as the all-time high monthly record on the NIBSS electronic payment platform.
Meanwhile, the volume of transactions processed by NIBSS for the year also jumped from 9.7 billion in 2023 to 11.2 billion in 2024.
This represents a 15.5% increase in the volume of electronic transactions year on year.
Industry analysts believe that the surge in e-payment transactions can be linked to the recent cash crunch experience and the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria ,CBN, limiting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn daily.
According to the revised cashless policy, which came into effect on January 9, 2023, cash withdrawal by an individual is limited to N500,000 a week, while corporate organizations have N5 million withdrawal limit in a week.
A Lagos-based financial analyst, Mr. Adewale Adeoye, said the non-availability of cash in banks like it used to be has been pushing more Nigerians to embrace cashless payment.
According to him, those who need cash by all means now resort to PoS operators, through which they either use their cards or transfer into accounts to receive cash.
“It is expected that electronic transactions will continue to go up since banks are not willing to release cash like before. Aside from the CBN withdrawal limit, if you enter a bank today to withdraw cash, they may tell you that you can’t collect more than N5,000 over the counter.
“So, you are forced to use ATMs, which in most cases are also short of cash. If all that fails, you start looking for PoS operators or you resort to doing mobile transfers”, he said.
The NIBSS Instant Payments ,NIP, is an account-number-based, online real-time Inter-Bank payment solution developed in the year 2011 by NIBSS.
It is the Nigerian financial industry’s preferred funds transfer platform that guarantees instant value to the beneficiary.
According to NIBSS, over the years, Nigerian banks have exposed NIP through their various channels, that is, internet banking, bank branches, Kiosks, mobile apps, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data ,USSD, PoS, ATM, etc. to their customers.
Aside from the cash scarcity experienced in March 2023, the revised cashless policy implemented by the CBN which further limits the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from banks daily, has also been pushing e-payment growth.
Many Nigerians are now getting used to mobile transfers, paying with PoS, and USSD, among others.
In the same vein, the latest data released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System ,NIBSS, has revealed that the number of active bank accounts in Nigeria rose to 311.6 million in December 2024.
At the end of 2023, NIBSS data showed that total active bank accounts in the country stood at 202.6 million.
This indicates that a total of 106 million new accounts were opened or reactivated between January and December last year.
According to the World Bank, access to a transaction account is the first step toward broader financial inclusion since it allows people to store, send, and receive money.
While the NIBSS data is based on reports from banks, millions of Nigerians are financially included through fintech accounts.
According to NIBSS, the number of inactive or dormant bank accounts in the country stood at 19.5 million. This shows a 7.9% increase in the number of abandoned accounts year-on-year as the figure stood at 18.06 million at the end of 2023.
An inactive or dormant account is a bank account that has had no activity on it for 12 months. Banks convert accounts with no activity for a long period into inoperative or dormant accounts to curtail the risk of fraud.
By segregating the accounts, banks bring to their workers’ attention the risk involved in these accounts and call for their due diligence.
Similarly, the NIBSS data shows that the number of bank accounts that have been closed stood at 25.5 million.
This shows that about 4.3 million bank accounts were closed in the year as the number of closed bank accounts was 21.2 million as of December 2023.
Meanwhile, the number of active bank accounts in the country as of December 2024 shows that there is still a very wide gap between the number of accounts and the number of Bank Verification Numbers ,BVN, which is now a compulsory requirement for opening an account.
The NIBSS database shows that total registered BVNs by account owners stood at 64.8 million as of January 2025.
However, industry analysts believe that the difference may not be much given that multiple accounts can be linked to a single BVN.
According to Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access ,EFInA, Access to Financial Services in Nigeria 2023 Survey report, 5% (3 million) of banked adults do not have a BVN or NIN.
Recall that the Central Bank of Nigeria ,CBN, in December 2023 announced that it would freeze accounts without a BVN and National Identification Number ,NIN, from April 2024.
In a circular by the apex bank, it instructed banks to place a “Post no Debit” restriction – which prevents customers from making withdrawals, transfers, or any other debits “for all existing Tier-1 accounts/wallets without BVN or NIN”.
