2018: Nigerian banking system did ₦80.4 trillion in inter-bank transfers

According to data from the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), ₦80.4 trillion was transferred through the NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP), an increase from ₦56.17 trillion in 2017.

Since its launch in 2011 as an online, real-time interbank payment system, NIP has gained widespread use among the nation's banking clients as a reliable method of money transfers. In just four years, the total value of transactions through the channel increased by 303% from ₦19.92 trillion in 2014.

The volume and value of transactions through NIP have increased over time, but those through NIBSS Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) have decreased. NEFT is a 24-hour credit transfer system, in contrast to the instantaneous nature of NIP transactions. Consequently, this implies that the value won't be received by the beneficiary until a day after the transaction was started.

The value of NEFT fell from ₦12 trillion in 2015 to ₦11.6 trillion in 2018.



The value of web payments increased significantly as well, rising from ₦184.6 billion in 2015 to ₦404.6 billion in 2018, a little mo

re than 100 percent rise in just three years.

For eBillsPay, however, the situation is different. Although the amount of e-BillsPay transactions increased, the overall value for 2018 decreased. While volume grew from 900,000 to 1.1 million, its overall value, which was ₦550.75 billion in 2017, decreased by ₦50 billion in 2018.

In 2018, mobile money carriers processed 87.1 million transactions with 8.5 million users, totalling ₦1.8 trillion.


Individual checks, eBillsPay, and online payments are among the Nigerian payment system channels that processed less than one trillion naira in 2018. With 729.4 million transactions, NIP had the largest value at ₦80.4 trillion, while all other channels had total values over one trillion naira.