The Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) efforts to ensure an efficient payment system in the country appear to be bearing fruit, as transactions worth N33.2 trillion were carried out electronically in August via the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) Instant Payment platform (NIP).

NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) is an account-number-based, online-real-time Inter-Bank payment solution created by NIBSS in 2011. It is the preferred funds transfer platform of the Nigerian financial industry, ensuring immediate value to the beneficiary.

According to NIBS data, the figure represents an all-time high e-payments value recorded in a month since the platform’s deployment. This represents a 13.3 percent increase over the N29.3 trillion recorded in July. Year on year, the e-payment value increased by 50% from N22.1 trillion in August of last year.

According to NIBSS, the value of e-payment recorded reflected an increase in the volume of deals within the month. The number of NIPs issued increased by 10.6 percent in August to 448 million, up from 405 million in July.

An examination of the 8-month data recently released by NIBSS revealed that the NIP platform recorded N26.6 billion in transactions in January. This was a 43.7% increase over the N18.5 trillion recorded in the same month last year.

Similarly, in February, N27.2 trillion in transactions were completed via the electronic platform. This represented a 48.6 percent increase over February 2021, when N18.3 trillion was recorded.

The platform recorded 31.8 trillion transactions in March, representing a 44.5% increase over the N22 trillion recorded in the same month last year.

In April of this year, the value of transactions on the NIP platform was N29.2 trillion. This is also a 41.6% increase from the N20.6 trillion recorded in April 2021. In May, the value of e-payment transactions stood at N29.6 trillion, a 43% increase over the previous year’s figure of N20.7 trillion.

NIP transactions increased by 37% to N31.7 trillion in June 2022, up from N23.1 trillion at the same time in 2021. Likewise, the month of July saw a 31% increase from N22.4 trillion last year to N29.3 trillion this year.

In August, the value of e-payments in Nigeria increased by 50% to N33.2 trillion, up from N22.1 trillion in the same period last year.

This means that the total value of e-payment transactions in the last eight months has now reached N238.7 trillion.