Yemisi Izuora
An Online payment company PayU is planning a major boost to connect businesses to Nigeria’s online payment market.
Annual online payments in Nigeria are estimated to surpass NGN200bn this year, from NGN167bn in 2016.
Country manager of PayU Nigeria, Juliet Nwanguma, said: “We have identified businesses that can benefit from our expertise across 16 markets, where we offer more than 250 payment options.”
With more than 2.3 billion users worldwide, PayU is aiming to help Nigerian businesses grow their market share and achieve their business objectives.
Data recently released by the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) showed that 5.5 million transactions worth NGN46.7bn were generated through online sales in the first quarter of 2017. This is an increase on the quarterly average of 3.5 million transactions worth NGN33bn in 2016. This 58% growth is a clear indication of the increased confidence and preference for online sales among Nigerians.
The double-digit growth, according to Ms Nwanguma, is far below the potential of the market for online payments in Nigeria.
She noted that, in a country of more than 180 million people, consisting of 61 million active bank customers and where e-payment transactions are worth NGN56trn in a year, the potential for online payments in Nigeria is huge and waiting to be tapped.
Nigeria has some 97 million active internet users and the company plans to use that group to popularise and increase online payments in Nigeria.
“At PayU, we believe that with the deployment of appropriate strategies and products that are designed to encourage more businesses to adopt online payment, the market in Nigeria can record triple-digit growth in both volume and value of online payments. This is the driving philosophy of PayU’s operations in Nigeria,” said Ms Nwanguma.
“Since last year, when we entered the Nigerian market, we have used tokenisation, recurring payments for subscription services and single-click payments for faster checkout.”