Experts Harp on Retail Sector Growth

By Emma Okonji

Stakeholders in the Nigerian payment industry have said that solutions that guarantee immediate value for customers and merchants alike will drive growth and expansion in the retail sector of the economy, in line with global trends.

Merchants were also encouraged to be positive in their approach towards the adoption of innovative payment solutions.

These were the views by participants at the recently held third quarter 2018 edition of PoS Innovation Summit in Lagos, which was sponsored by Global Accelerex Limited and the Committee of e-Business Industry Heads (CeBIH).

The summit with the theme: “Expanding Retail Merchants’ Possibilities”, focused on highlighting the various opportunities available to retail merchants for payment processing in light of the ingenious solutions being rolled-out almost on a daily basis.

The keynote speaker and Executive Director, Operations and Technology, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) Plc, Christabel Onyejekwe, revealed that growth trend for immediate value services exhibited a sharp growth trajectory from 2012 to 2017, indicating a clear market preference for services that offer immediate value to the beneficiary.

She added that in 2017, PoS volumes were at 230 per cent, compared with what it was in 2016 volumes, while NIP recorded 241 per cent of the 2016 volumes.

Speaking at the event, the Managing Director of Global Accelerex, Tunde Ogungbade restated the commitment of the company to use the summit as a platform to harness collective knowledge and effort that can birth innovation for the retail payment sector and the development of the industry.

The Chief Executive Officer, TeamApt Limited, Tosin Eniolorunda, disclosed that opportunities to advance the retail business sector abound such as customer information systems, loyalty systems and embracement of emerging payment channels like fingerprint and voice.

In attendance at the summit were representatives of commercial and microfinance banks, Payment Terminal Service Providers (PTSPs), regulators, licensed mobile money operators, merchants and other stakeholders in both the payment industry and retail business sector.

The panelists at the event were unanimous in their appeal for the industry to look into issues such as non-implementation of same day, real-time settlement, reconciliation issues and downtime on the terminal management system.