Service restored since Friday, says NIBSS
Many financial transactions have failed in the last three days, owing to downtime at the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS). This frustrated Nigerians, who could not complete a single electronic transaction since Friday.
Payment of some companies’ staff salaries was also delayed due to the challenges. NIBSS is a shared-service e-payment infrastructure company facilitating electronic payment within the Nigerian payment space.
Checks by The Guardian showed that many transactions, including those initiated via NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP), Internet banking; Point of Sale (PoS) and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) experienced snail-speed completion, while others failed to sail through. Even transactions via the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) platform also failed to connect.
Confirming the hitches, financial institutions and fintechs sent messages to their customers, notifying them of the challenges. Union Bank, in a message to customers, said due to the ongoing service downtime from “our technical partners, you may have experienced delays in transfers to and receiving funds from other banks. This affects all banks, and we are working with them to resolve the issue quickly. Transfers within Union Bank and other services are unaffected.
“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and appreciate your patience. If you have any questions, please email customer service.”
ARM Investments also messaged its customers.
The firm stated, “We are writing to inform you of an ongoing issue with our settlement partner for all banks, which is experiencing difficulties in completing transfers between banks. This is causing delays in crediting funds to our accounts.”
As a result, you may experience delays in the processing of your transactions, including the crediting of redemption values and the booking of investments/subscriptions.
“Please be assured that we are working closely with our settlement partner to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. We understand the inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.”
Also, Kuda Bank told customers, “NIBSS, the settlement partner for all banks, is having intermittent issues completing transfers at the moment, so money sent to your Kuda account might be delayed and transfers to other banks may not be possible.
“As the issues are being fixed by NIBSS, we’ll keep you updated on our status page.” While there has been no official statement from NIBSS on the development, a source at the firm told The Guardian that service had since been restored. “The downtime was just for about three to four hours on Friday. Immediately, our technical team went after it and ensured service returned.”
As of Q1, 2024, e-payment transactions rose to N234.4 trillion as more Nigerians went cashless over the period. Relying on data from NIBSS, the value recorded on the NIP represented 89 per cent increase over the N123.9 trillion recorded in Q1 2023.
From January to March, there was a steady rise in the number of payment transactions carried out via various banks and fintechs’ electronic channels in the country.
While the NIP transaction value rose to N72.1 trillion in January from N71.9 trillion recorded in December 2023, the value of electronic payments increased further to N79.3 million in February.
By March, the value of electronic transactions in the country surged to a record N83 trillion.The NIBSS data showed that e-payment volume also maintained a steady rise in the first quarter. An analysis of the monthly data revealed that transaction volume stood at 887.58 million in January. In February, the volume of transactions jumped to 905 million, while 986.6 million transactions were recorded in March.
