Nigerian banks and merchants will be granted awards for their contribution towards driving the cashless programme at the

Last year Nigerian banks paid an incentive of N400 million on the use of point of sales terminals.

Christabel Onyekwe, NIBSS executive director, Business Development stated the loyalty engine which gives customers points for every PoS usage will be used to put a stop to the payment of cash back to bank customers.

Onyejekwe said that the difference between the cash back and loyalty engine is that the former gives back cash while the latter records points that can be redeemed at a later time.

She stated that the out of 120,000 PoS terminals in the country only about 100,000 is connected to the NIBSS platform and 62,000 active. She added that NIBSS is currently speaking with stake holders to withdraw the dormant PoS from circulation.

The cash back was introduced in 2014 as an incentive for customers to use their cards for payments and to drive the usage of PoS, customers are paid back 40 percent of the 1.25 percent that merchants are charged on PoS usage.