Since the last couple of years it has been a tale story of pity and shamelessness for the financial sector of the nation neglecting Nigerians(The banked and the unbanked) to struggles eye shore in the name of using an Automated Teller Machine(ATM)
During the last festivity period the scenario at every ATM galleries in the cities across major states of the federation let alone the hinterlands really brought the obvious to the fore that there is short supply of ATM in circulation.
According an industry watcher and a financial analyst, Nigeria is presently short of 44,000 ATM machines, as only 16,000 have been deployed across the country out of the supposedly 60,000 in tandems with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s financial inclusion policy.
The financial expert, Mr. Bola Adisa who revealed this adduced the reasons for the ATM shortage, Adisa, stated that commercial banks are presently not buying ATMs due to the forex challenges.
“In terms of the global standard of ATM usage per 100, 000 people, Nigeria is very low. We have just about 16,000 ATM Machines in the whole of Nigeria, which cannot serve the population of over 180 million people. The projected number of ATMs that can serve Nigeria is 600,000,” he stated.
He stressed that the shortage of the ATM Machines is responsible for the queue, which will always be there, except the banks start to buy ATM again.
Adisa who is the Business Director, Financial Services at CWG Plc, Nigeria’s largest Information Technology integration company however, disclosed that CWG Plc is already working out a solution that would ultimately address the challenge now and in the near future. He said the solution tagged ‘ATM as a Service’ would allow it to deploy ATM machines in strategic positions across the country and meet up with the global standard of ATM usage per 100, 000 people.
“For us as a solution provider, we are now pushing a solution, which we have tagged ‘ATM as a Service’ to the banks. How it works is that we partner with the banks to put ATM machines in strategic places. We own the ATM and offer it to the banks as a service. We believe this service will reduce the queue from the banks, especially now people can do a lot with the ATM,” he stated.
He added that with the ‘ATM as a Service’, the banks need not worry themselves investing in ATM again as CWG is already investing in it as a service to the banks. Meaning, CWG will own and support the ATM, with the bank only coming to use it as a service.
He said this is presently the best practice, where someone else build the technology as a service and then the banks subscribe to it, noting that a situation like that would help the client move from CAPX to OPEX form of expenditure.
According to a spokes person from the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System who confirmed that Nigeria is more than 40,000 short of the number of ATM installations needed to serve its 180 million citizens.
She however said ‘I can tell you that we will get there; it can only be better.”
Certainly, some Nigerians believe it couldn’t get worse. “glitches” including fraud, network outages and failed transactions have been a constant frustrationparticularly through the holiday season
Various media reports have said large numbers of Nigerians have stood for hours in deep queues at ATMs, waiting for their turn to get cash.
But even with this inefficiency to contend with, consumers did manage to withdraw 3.5 trillion naira ($11.13 billion) from Nigeria’s approximately 17,253 ATMs from January through September, according to numbers from NIBSS.
With its 2011 cash-less initiative, the Nigerian government set out to persuade citizens to bank their money, rather than carrying large amounts on their person or hiding it in their homes.
ATMs were to have provided a means for consumers to hold only the cash they need day to day, but the shortage of installations has hampered the cash-less effort.
However, it has given a boost to the check printing industry. NIBSS statistics show an increase in check transactions — attributable to reliability issues plaguing the Nigerian payments network.
