Grace Ashiru
The AfriGo national domestic card program was launched today by the central bank of Nigeria.The program was first shown to the public at a Bankers’ Committee news conference in October 2022. It includes the central bank as one of Nigeria’s three card payment programs.
We can get to our data sovereignty with the national domestic card. “Secondly, it’s cheaper,” he said.
The card payments market is dominated mainly by global players like Mastercard and Visa, with Verve by Interswitch trailing behind. In 2021, the total amount of card transactions in Nigeria’s cards and payments market will be limited to $18.2 billion.
These multinational companies offer central payment networks to which debit and credit cards can connect. This lets debit and credit cards make cash transactions more accessible. The cards could then be given to customers by banks, financial institutions, or even stores.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is working with the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to end the triopoly and start a national card payment system. It will allow the CBN to change and maybe even take control of a rapidly growing market.
The CBN says that its most recent push into fintech was successful because it cut costs and used foreign exchange better.
Emefiele said, “At a time when there are still problems with foreign exchange around the world, I must say that we made this card to ensure that all online card transactions will now go on the Nigerian national domestic system.
NIBSS and CBN will work together to make sure that foreign exchange fees are only added to international transactions made with Visa and Mastercard, as they are now
This is true because many of the credit cards we use now let us charge things in foreign currency. He said, “However, all domestic transactions will be done through the national domestic card scheme once the national domestic card is in place.”
Even though this “homegrown” project is the first of its kind in Africa, China, India, Brazil, and Turkey have all taken similar steps. Rupay is the most popular card payment system in India because it works well, doesn’t cost much, and is backed by the government. More than 600 million Rupay cards have been given out so far.
Mr Premier Oiwoh, the managing director and chief executive officer of the NIBSS, said that the program was made to solve some of the industry’s unique problems and provide specialised, cutting-edge services.
If this program is as successful as Rupay, Nigerians will pay less for debit cards and other things. But until the cards are used, we won’t know how reliable and well they work with other cards.
Emefiele said that this decision would make it harder for international companies to compete. He said that the Nigerian market is enormous and that the current players have made many changes to the ecosystem over the past 12 years.
But there is still a long way to go because millions of Nigerians don’t have the cards they need to do transactions.
“The national domestic card program will undoubtedly make this a reality in the coming months. He said that the overwhelming majority of Nigerians could no longer be ignored.
The NIBSS-affiliated business AfriGOpay Financial Services Limited (AFSL) will implement the national domestic card program.
