Naira scarcity frustrates Nigerians

Nigerians are becoming even more frustrated amid the naira scarcity as electronic alternatives to the cashless policy continue to experience glitches.

While the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) continues the push for the policy, alternatives like the point of sale (POS), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), and bank apps platforms are failing, leaving many Nigerians stranded.

Nonye Omomemi, a business strategy consultant, spoke of the situation on Twitter.

“No withdrawals/cash, no transfer, failed POS, failed USSD,” she tweeted.

Read also: Commuters shift to digital payments as naira scarcity bites

With people’s inability to carry out these transactions a lot of their daily activities have been disrupted, and their basic needs are unmet.

“I don’t know how many have noticed that Nigerian banking apps are shutting down such that one can’t even transfer the smallest amounts. No cash, no transfers. How will people vote if they can’t access their money in order to attend to their most basic needs? What kind of reality,” Molara Woods, an author said on Twitter.

The failure of these transactions has caused some to lose money.

Ifeanyi Okolo, a trader, told BusinessDay that he lost N50,000 to failed transactions.

“I lost N50,000 yesterday (Tuesday) to multiple failed online transactions and PoS too, I’ve been debited already,” he said.

A lot of people fear that the online payment infrastructure is not equipped to do the volume of transactions it is now experiencing.

“It has been almost impossible to do a bank transfer today and people are lamenting all over. Looks like a near collapse of the online payment infrastructure,” said an anonymous.

The Fintech Association of Nigeria (FintechNGR) said in its latest report, ‘Cashless Economy on Steroids’ “for a cashless policy to be successful, it has to do two things: offer incentives to encourage mainstream adoption and ensure the current IT infrastructure has the capacity to handle the increase in transaction volumes.