Baring any last minute change, Users of Point of Sales (POS) will be greeted with new service charge beginning today, (Monday), if threat by Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents (AMMBAN) is anything to go by.
AMMBAN had cited current economic realities in the country for the proposed hike, which, in some quarters, has been put at about 400 per cent.
While AMMBAN boasts of about 1.4 million members, largely PoS agents, transactions on the about two million PoS terminals in the country rose to about 40 per cent in the first three months of the year, according to checks on the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
Speaking with The Guardian, yesterday, National Publicity Secretary, AMMBAN, Oluwasegun Elegbede, maintained that the hike takes effect today (Monday).
He explained that the operators also have to adjust, “as everybody in business in Nigeria has adjusted to current realities, especially after the removal of fuel subsidy. You must have noticed that in Nigeria, nobody is living; we are all just surviving, except those in power. On the streets, people are merely using each day to survive.”
He said PoS operators are part of the ecosystem and are in business to make profit.
Amid report that the hike might go as far as about 400 per cent, Elegbede said: “Let me clarify this, we (AMMBAN) have not said, compulsorily, there should be a particular percentage hike on any transaction. What we have done, if you can even recollect, during the surprise hike that happened in January, February and March this year, some unscrupulous elements entered into the business and started to hike prices indiscriminately, and the cry across the town was that PoS operators have done this, have done that, whereas, it was not our members that did it.
“What we are trying to do now is that after hearing several outcries from our people, there was a blanket framework, where it was stipulated that prices should not go beyond a certain threshold, and below it, in each of the states.”
