Business
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While a state like Lagos appears to be in tune with the use of cashless policy, Abuja, the federal capital city is still trying to make sense of the situation, three months down the line
| By Vincent Nzemeke | Feb. 3, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT
WHEN the Central Bank of Nigeria announced plans to introduce the cashless policy, many Nigerians kicked against it. Perhaps because they did not fully understand the details of the policy; some simply dismissed it as an attempt by the government to regulate how they spend their money. This affected the policy which was initially scheduled to take off in 2012 did not materialise until October 2013. Under the cashless policy, charges were placed on withdrawals and deposits above N500,000 for individuals and N2 million for corporate bodies. In defending the policy, Sanusi Lamido, governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, said the cashless policy was aimed at reducing the money in circulation.
Three months after the take off of the cashless policy in Abuja, it appears that Nigerians are yet to adapt to it let alone comply with the cashless policy. For instance, the Point of Sale, POS, machine which is one of the essential features of the cashless policy, has become a common sight at major shops and offices around city but they are hardly used. The traders and the customers seem to be very comfortable with the old ways of transacting business as many transactions are still done with cash regardless of the amount involved.
Even in government offices where the policy is supposed to be active, it is the same situation. POS machines are not available and where they are available they are hardly ever used. Emmanuel Ubeta, public relations officer, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, said the organisation which is in charge of collecting tax that sometimes run into millions of Naira on behalf of the government, was yet to acquire POS machines. “We are yet to commence use of the POS. For now, people go to the bank to make payments of tax. However, we are working on a new tax payment system called the integrated tax payment system which will allow people to pay tax through POS machines and credit cards,” Ubeta said.
A similar thing obtains at the corporate affairs commission, CAC. There are no POS machines available which means that those who come to register their companies still have to spend some times at the banks waiting to make payments. On the day Realnews visited the office, Olajide Ajetunmobi, who came to process the registration of his company, complained that he had to go to the bank to carry out a transaction which took some time. “I went into a bank in the office and the queue there was really very long. They have to start using that POS soon to save people from this unnecessary stress. In all the other countries where we copy things from anyone can just use their card. How can they check fraudsters with this old system? They really need to sit up,” Ajetunmobi said.
The same goes for some private business owners in the city too. Many of them have no POS machines and the few ones that have are just like their counterparts in government offices who hardly use them. Fumilayo Ogunkoya works in a store that is a major distributor of phones and other gadgets in Abuja, but despite all the talks, the store owner was yet to acquire a POS machine since the cashless policy began. “We sell a lot here and we only take cash. People spend as much as N500, 000 here and everything is settled in cash. Since this cashless thing started, the owner has been talking about getting a POS machine but we have not seen any,” Ogunkoya said.
Like the sellers, some customers in the store also prefer to pay for their goods in cash. Ifunaya Eze, a customer at a supermarket, said she did not know about the POS machine and preferred to pay cash for her purchases. “I don’t really know about this POS thing. May be it is because they have not done enough sensitisation on the matter. Although, I have been seeing it in some places, I still prefer to use cash,” Eze told Realnews.
But despite the challenges of adaptability, there is still something positive about the cashless policy. In some shopping malls, banks and restaurants, the POS machines are actively in use. Even in some filling stations POS machines are available and used by customers. At Grand Square plaza, Abuja, Feyi Adetayo, a customer, told Realnews that he liked the cashless policy and has adapted to it since it was introduced. “I love the fact that I do not have to start carrying cash in my bag because I am a big shopper. I do not go out often to buy things so when I do go shopping, I buy in bulk and so with this card I don’t have to worry about my money being stolen or even overpaying for goods by mistake like it used to happen,” he said.
Hamid Danladi, another customer at the plaza, said that he goes to buy things for his family and that the use of POS was becoming common in Abuja. “My wife recently went to the Nyanya market and she found this store that has the POS machine, it was quite a surprise. I have been to some fuelling stations and some of them now use that machine so I guess with time it will spread completely and paying with cash will be a thing of the past,” Danladi said.
Tope Fasua, an economic analyst, agreed that it would take some time for Nigerians to adapt to the reality of a cashless society. “You cannot expect that people will just get used to a policy over night. It will take some time. When Automated Teller Machines, ATM, newly came, people did not like it. But now almost every Nigerian has an ATM card. So with time everybody will get used to this cashless policy,” Fasua said. But in Lagos the teething problem for the policy has been gradually overcome as people are now in consonant with it.
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