Regional President for Central Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA), Visa, Tareq Muhmood, has said Nigeria and Ukraine have recorded a significant reduction in cash transactions since the COVID-19 disruption in 2020, reducing cash’s share of financial transactions to about 20 per cent.

Muhmood disclosed this yesterday, while speaking at the Media Day ahead of the Visa Payments Forum being held in Paris, France. The event brought together journalists and top executives of the company to discuss emerging risks and prospects in the payment ecosystem.

The rise of digital payments in the two countries, alongside significant investment in payment infrastructure across the region, has demonstrated the opportunities for scaling trade through an efficient payment system.

However, he noted that the pace of adoption of digital payments across the region has been slowed by countries such as Egypt and Pakistan, where cash transactions still account for as much as 60 per cent. In the two countries, unlike Nigeria, cash remains king, a trend he attributed to mistrust.

With average cash transactions across the CEMEA region declining only from about 70 per cent to 50 per cent, Muhmood said there was still a long way to go in advancing digital payments.

Besides, he noted that half of the world’s 1.3 billion unbanked population lives in the CEMEA region. The challenge, according to him, has fuelled the proliferation of payment players, albeit with limited use cases.

The growth of tokenisation, stablecoins and point-of-sale (PoS) payments, which Visa is currently promoting, represents some of the leading frontiers for future growth, the regional president said.

As a demonstration of his team’s commitment to changing the narrative, he told journalists that the number of locations accepting Visa in the region had grown from 11 million to 21 million in the last few years, with “exciting scalability” still underway.

However, with about 90 million locations yet to be covered, Muhmood said there was still a long way to go in achieving an efficient payment system.

In the last six months of last year, about N6 billion was reportedly lost to scams involving identity theft and other fraudulent activities. Speakers at the event noted that the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence would only complicate efforts to build trust.