Page 153 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 1

STS422 Damola Owalade
o Relevance
Given the focus on interbank transactions, the data does not include intra-
bank or ‘on-us’ transactions. To achieve the required coverage, intra-bank data
is required and there was no definitive information on the market split
between interbank and intrabank transactions in the Nigerian payments
system. Furthermore, only POS transactions provided information on
merchant payments that are intrabank in nature. The consequence is that the
data is not representative of digital payments in its entirety in Nigeria.
o Accessibility
The data provided was masked specifically for BVNs and bank account
numbers of the sample provided. The research team was unable to access the
data remotely so the extraction of data was conducted on-site.
o Interpretability
A data schema was provided which depicted how the indicators are
organised in the NIBSS management information system. The team relied on
NIBSS staff members to provide accurate description of the data due to the
lack of a data dictionary.
o Coherence
The data was generally stable for the time period covered. One of the digital
platforms (mCASH) was only introduced in 2016 and had limited usage levels.
Therefore, it was not considered during the analysis.
o Accuracy
The data was directly pulled from an operational environment therefore it
is likely to be accurate. Nevertheless, the quality of the data is only as good as
the data provided by customers during the on-boarding process to use digital
services such as when they open an account. Location information proved to
be inaccurate in some instances as observed during the recruitment of
respondents for the survey. Some of the customers on the list provided
claimed that they no longer reside in the location they provided when they
registered for the BVN. In addition, merchant location information (when
receiving POS devices) might not match location of the actual terminal as POS
devices are mobile and in Nigeria, they are currently not tracked. This makes
analytics based on location prone to errors.
 Non-sampling errors
o Securing interviews to merge admin with survey data
Of the initial list of 4,710, a total of 611 respondents were recruited for the
research, the majority of whom were from Kano (448). Similar to the case in
Zimbabwe, sampling from the NIBSS database resulted in a low response rate
(13% response rate). This is expected especially in a commercial city such as
Lagos where people are guarded to avert the possibility of fraud.

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