Customer, Bank Errors Push PoS Failed Payments To 16%
Nigerians continue to experience declined transactions on Point of Sale terminals all over the country as failed transactions hit 296,528 on Thursday evening.
Live transaction updates obtained from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System showed that payment on PoS terminals had a high failure rate of 16 per cent out of a total of 1.82 million transactions conducted as of 6.26pm.
According to the data, the customers contributed the most to the failure of the transactions as 45,162 of the failed transactions were attributed to errors they committed.
This was closely followed by errors emanating from the acquirer bank, which accounted for 37,478 of the failed payments.
The statistics indicated that 36,276 errors emanated from the processor and 24,817 errors, which originated from the issuer bank, also contributed significantly to the failed funds transfer and payments carried out by retailers and merchants across the country.
However, the updates showed that the NIBSS platform and security breach had not in any way contributed to the unsuccessful payments.
PoS transactions peaked at 6.10pm and with a total of 17,763 payments carried out at the time.
Meanwhile, bank customers carried out over two million transactions on NIBSS Instant Pay platform on Thursday, the live updates showed.
NIP, which is an online real-time product that facilitates instant digital payment of bills on an account, hit exactly 2,121,682 transactions and recorded a low failure rate of 2.25 per cent as of 6.26pm on Thursday.
NIP transactions peaked at 9.55am and with a total of 35,055 payments carried out at the time.
Most of the unsuccessful funds transfer was as a result of the unavailable beneficiary bank, which contributed to 44,128 failed transactions and transfer limit that was exceeded for 1,671 payments.
The data showed that another reason for failed NIP transactions was account name mismatch, among others.
The President, Association of Mobile Money Agents in Nigeria, Mr Victor Olojo, recently explained that technology glitches contributed significantly to the declined transactions.
Olojo observed that declined transactions were high during peak transaction periods and festive season.
He said, “The apps being deployed by the operators and web solutions are unable to carry the large volume of transactions that agents are channeling into the system.
“We realised that during high transaction traffic, these apps keep processing. We have also advocated for PoS terminals with roaming SIM capabilities.”
Olojo explained that operators needed to ensure that competent web solutions and apps were deployed on payment devices. Copyright PUNCH.
