The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System disclosed on Wednesday that cashless transactions in the country rose to N611.06tn in 2023.

 It said the payments grew by 54.55 per cent year-on-year from N395.38tn in 2022.

NIBSS Instant Payments 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 funds transfer platform that guarantees instant value to the beneficiary

An analysis of data from NIBSS showed that electronic payment channels were used 11.05 billion times in 2023, a 75.96 per cent increase from the 6.28 billion times they were used in the prior year.

It showed that the total value of instant payments in 2023 was N600.36tn, and Point of Sales transactions was N10.7tn and relied upon for 1.38 billion times.

The firm noted that the figures, which hit an all-time high, indicated improvement in the acceptance of cashless payments by Nigerians

While the e-payment data showed a steady increase throughout the 12 months of the year, the highest value was recorded in December, which was a festive period.

In December, Nigerians transacted up to N71.9tn over electronic channels.

 The NIBSS data showed that e-payment volume hit an all-time high of 1.1 billion in March 2023, when the country experienced cash scarcity and were forced to transact through electronic channels.

However, the value for March was not as high as what was recorded in December.

 Meanwhile, the volume of transactions processed by NIBSS for the year also jumped to 9.7 billion during the period under review from 5.1 billion in 2022, representing a 90 per cent increase year-on-year.

 A look at the value of electronic transactions month by month showed that Nigerians spent N38.9tn on electronic platforms in January and in the following month,e-payment value stood at N36.8tn.

 Similarly, in March 2023, the value of electronic transactions jumped to N48.3tn, driven by the scarcity of cash at that time