THE SOLUTION

Point of Sale terminals (commonly called POS terminals) will be deployed in fuel stations,restaurants, hotels, shops, eateries, and everywhere that payment is made and received. The Nigeria debit card would be accepted on these terminals.
Nigeria Debit Cards are cards linked to the accounts of bank customers and issued by such banks to their customers.
Unlike other POS schemes that have previously been launched in Nigeria where transactions are offline and an e-purse account is opened for a customer in order to use the card, transactions on the POS terminals on the InterSwitch network are online. In other words, the cards issued are linked directly to the individual’s account (savings and/or current) in the bank. The need to carry cash before transactions are consummated is now going to be a thing of the past.

BENEFITS OF THE POS TERMINALS TO
A MARCHANT

• Reduction in cost of cash handling.
• It eliminates the risk of counterfeit currency being issued to merchants and pilfering by employees.
• Reduction in storage risks. Low denominations of Nigerian currency means that large volumes of cash must be stored at retail outlets, before being physically transported to banks.
• Reduces loss through human and/ or machine counting error.
• Reduces volume of available physical cash, thus reducing theft.
• Businesses may open for longer hours because there will be little or no cash to attract armed robbers.
• Transporting of the POS terminal to a bank for downloads is not applicable.
• The POS terminal acts as a powerful customer loyalty tool and enables repeat patronage due to the fact that it offers a speedy and more convenient means of payment to consumers.Increases the potential for spontaneous purchases by a cardholder.
• Eliminates the need to visit a bank to load cards. All the parties in the scheme will be linked to one another enabling online transaction processing. Enables fast and easy payment processing.

WHAT IS OPERATION CASHLESS?

Operation Cashless is an initiative of InterSwitch limited and its 9 Independent Service Organisations (ISO) partners aimed at increasing the usage of cards as a payment method and reducing the dependence on cash in the Nigerian society.

In line with CBN goal to effectively manage the amount of cash in circulation, InterSwitch adopted the strategy of partnering with ISOs to deploy online POS terminals at merchant locations all over the country. As a result, the Operation Cashless initiative was conceived.

Operation Cashless is being promoted and launched alongside the deployment of Point of sale terminals in the country. The Point of sale (POS) terminals acts as a complement to the already existing Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). The appointed Independent Sales/Service Organizations (ISOs) are directly responsible for the rapid deployment of EFTPOS terminals across the country. The 9 ISOs that are now fully certified are Caplink, Capital Partners Financial Products, Ecco Solutions, Electronic PayPlus, ETopNG, Paycycle, PayMaster, PayStream and SWAP.

With the launch of Operation cashless an account holder with any bank on the InterSwitch network can request for a Nigeria Debit Card from its bank in order to benefit from the awakening of the cashless era.

OBJECTIVE OF OPERATION CASHLESS

• To rapidly move Nigeria away from a cash-based economy to a card-based nation with the use
  of the Nigeria Debit Card.
• To facilitate an efficient and effective payment system in Nigeria.
• To promote the rapid adoption of ePayment across the economy using the POS, ATM, Mobile and Internet channels. To provide a conducive world-class and nation-wide payment
• To promote the use of the Nigeria debit card ( a debit card which is issued by all member banks on the InterSwitch network to their customers)