Gone is the era where traders at the market rejected cashless options of payments. These days, if they’re not accepting payments via their Point-of-Sale (POS) machines, they are accepting direct transfers to either their personal or business accounts. Another cashless option that has become quite the order of the day is the Quick Response (QR) Payment, which involves scanning a barcode to make payments. This way the money is automatically deducted from the payer’s account and received immediately by the sender without any interruption. QR payments are typically faster, completely safe, safer than other cashless options of payments and free from fraud.
QR payments are becoming widely accepted such that Nigerian commercial banks are integrating the option into their mobile apps and customer-operated methods of making payments.
Quite recently, the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System plc (NIBSS) announced the launch of its QR payment solution – The Nigerian Quick Response (NQR) Payment solution. The solution was designed for Nigerian businesses and customers to make the process of buying and selling convenient and free from fraud. There have been cases where a seller decides to accept a bank transfer as payment for goods and receives an alert when the money was never even sent, or a reversal could happen and he/she has let the buyer out of the shop or office. This is the major problem that the NIBSS wants to eradicate with its NQR solution. The service is being run with financial services providers in the country and is aimed at being the number one QR option for merchants and buyers.
The NQR is finally available for use by merchants and buyers, and this was marked by the campaign which was done at the Oshodi Arena market.
The NIBSS plans on carrying out more penetration campaigns and encourage more traders to adopt the service for accepting payments. The NQR payment solution is fast, reliable, and seamless and has the potential of becoming the next big thing when it comes to payments between buyers and sellers.
Nigerians are slowly but gradually accepting cashless payments options. In years to come, options like QR payments would have settled into the system.