There was a time when bank customers in Nigeria used to queue up for hours to reach the cashier.
That is now history. The scene in the Nigerian banking hall is changing rapidly.
The Cashlite policy introduced four years ago by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has decongested the nation’s repulsive banking halls. The automated teller machine (ATM) has reduced the role of cashiers in the banking hall. Depositors now double as cashiers. They do most of their transactions at the ATM terminals.
People no longer need to go to banks, withdraw money and head for the department store for rigorous shopping. The super markets are all equipped with POS machines that read the ATM cards, facilitate payments and reduce the chores of both the seller and buyer. The POS terminals transfer the sales proceeds electronically into the seller’s account in the bank and reduce the risk of carting huge sums in sales proceeds to the bank. That in turn reduces the banker’s burden of counting huge stacks of dirty notes.
Some financial institutions like First Bank have made the use of ATM even more attractive. As large and seemingly unwieldy as First Bank is, one could obtain an ATM card at any branch of the bank within 20 minutes. I tried it one day and was amazed at the speed with which the card was issued and activated. Thirty minutes after I completed the form for the card, I was able to make a withdrawal with it.
Mobile banking is the industry’s magic of the 21st century. It is changing the nation’s entire financial landscape. I travelled to the U.S. with UBA’s MasterCard. The facility accorded me royal treatment in American retail outlets where visitors who pay with cash are regarded as primitive people. The card performed its first miracle at the arrival hall of the JFK International Airport, New York. The trolleys at the airport are locked electronically. The system only understands the language of electronic debit or credit cards. Given my wife’s experience in Rotterdam, the Netherland, with a MasterCard from a Nigerian bank, I did not trust the card in my pocket. I decided to gamble all the same. I slotted in the UBA MasterCard. The system deducted $5 and released the trolley for use. I jumped in ecstasy.
My host in Boston, Massachusetts left the shores of Nigeria more than a decade ago when banks were still issuing tally numbers to customers who had to wait for hours to be attended to. He still had that mental picture of Nigerian banks. When he drove me to a retail outlet in Lynn for shopping, he warned me not to bring out my archaic debit card because the “system here would not recognize it”. I felt insulted and decided to dare him. I flaunted the UBA MasterCard. The cashier slotted it into the system. It deducted the $630 I had to pay for my wares. My host watched in utter dismay as the Nigerian debit card performed wonders in the white man’s land. He bowed for UBA. His rating of the Nigerian banking system changed. When I returned, I promptly subscribed to U-Mobile, UBA’s telephone banking system. UBA is pathologically slow. It takes a minimum of two weeks to get an ATM card from the bank. I pounded the U-Mobile desk at the Ogba branch for three months before my U-Mobile line was activated. Since then, I have been doing most of my financial transactions from home. That luxury ended last Thursday when U-Mobile bared its fangs.
My colleague who had a bitter experience had warned me about the deficiency of a mobile banking system in a country with epileptic mobile telephone network. Last Thursday I saw why he was apprehensive. I transferred money to somebody who granted me a loan to pay my son’s bill in the medical school. U-Mobile debited my account but failed to credit my creditor’s account in First Bank. My creditor, who needed the money promptly, pounded my lines with calls. I waited for four hours and placed a call to UBA’s customer care. A lady at the other end assured me that if the money could not be transferred in 24 hours, it would be returned to my account. After 24 hours, I hit the U-Mobile desk at Ogba branch. A pleasant young man at the desk scrambled the system and spotted the inconclusive transaction. Lamenting that the refund could only be made at the headquarters, he asked me to write for the refund, and I did. I was again told that the refund would be made in 24 hours. I waited another 24 hours and placed two more calls to UBA customer care. By this time my creditor had become impatient. Another lady’s voice at customer care delivered the bad news: I would have to wait for four working days for the money to be returned to my account. I delivered the bad news to my creditor who went into frenzy. More than four days and N500 of air time, U-Mobile is yet to respond. That probably explains why many still shun mobile banking.