Recently, the Accountant-General of the Federation said e-payment has saved the government about N160bn. Is it really stemming corruption in the public sector?
What the Accountant-General said was that e-payment has saved N160billion. I think he was referring to payroll processing and tracking of ghost workers. But having said that, e-payment has brought in efficiencies into the system. For instance, vendors/contractors don’t have to go long distances before they are paid. If you submit your invoice, it is processed and payment hits your account.
Incidentally, we are privileged to be working with the office of the Accountant-General for the payment of the federal government contractors/vendors, salaries and pensioners. On the platform right from their offices in Abuja they press the buttons and beneficiaries’ accounts are credited in different accounts in commercial banks and microfinance banks in the country.
It has helped to create more efficiency in processing even in government circles and there is a higher level of transparency in the processing of transactions there. I would want to believe e-payment has stemmed corruption because corruption thrives were things are not very clear. But were you have transparency it becomes a little more difficult to continue to practice corruption.
There are lots of talks about ghost workers. You want to do biometric, you bring people out in the sun and capture their records but what happens most of the time is that they capture these records into a database and then they use a different payroll. In the process you will find out that some names will find their way into the payroll that is not on the biometric database that they have been captured because there are two systems. Some additional effort is required to keep synchronising.
But why is electronic fraud on the rise in the banking sector?
Let us put it this way, wherever there is man there will be stealing, there will be corruption. The issue is what happens thereafter. Under the manual system, it was more profound because it was easy for people to just remove the records so that you cannot trace or track anything. The beauty of e-payment is that we are not saying things can’t happen or things don’t happen but, it is a lot easier to block what has happened and prevent it from happening again and to trace who did it.
Most of the time the things you do from your system we know where it is coming from, we can know the computer where the fraud is perpetrated from. So, we can track back to know the identity. We need to have some laws that guide in tracing who did what. But more importantly is that once you know how it happened, if you know a thief can come into your house through a particular window that is weak and then you strengthen that window once and for all.
In the case of e-payment, it is easier to block leakages once and for all even if they do happen. I would say, generally speaking, yes, there can be e-corruption as you put it, but the e-anti-corruption need to be even much stronger.
Has e-payment penetrated informal sector of the economy especially for traders in places like Aba, Onitsha?
You will be surprised at what is happening in the informal sector. Initially there will be resistance, but as people begin to understand the system then they will see the benefits it offers them. Initially, they don’t trust e-payment. In fact, there was a joke a I heard recently about a man who was given cash and he took it to the bank, deposited it in the bank and then withdrew it and counted it again and that was what assured him that his money was safe in the bank.
Generally, as time goes on, people will know that you don’t have to do that. It is the same thing with e-payments, there may be challenges but more and more people are beginning to see that it is reliable despite the challenges and possible hiccups; it is reliable, more efficient and certainly more enduring.
For everyone I know, you will want to know how you are spending your money. It is easier for you to keep track of it when you have an electronic trace. These are some of the benefits that people begin to see. For the informal sector, we have debit and credit cards, there are the Point of Sale (PoS) terminals all of which are active in that segment of the market and they can begin to see that their balances are credited in the banks and that is increasing significantly too.
Tell us the volumes and transactions on the platform used by government for e-payment transactions
Currently we do between N400 to N500 billion transactions on the Remita platform a month. But we started at much lower numbers and it is growing on monthly basis. We are expecting more people to join the e-payment train and hopefully before the end of the year we should be doing very close to N1 trillion on a monthly basis and that would be very lovely. Cumulatively, we have done over N12 trillion.
How far has the SMEs plugged into the e-payment initiative in Nigeria?
So far so good but certainly it can be much better.
We expect the situation, from my perspective, to improve significantly in the long haul not just for SMEs, but also for clubs, associations, religious organisations, and educational institutions. All of them should have a link to the platform on their website for people to be able to make payments to them.Yes, some have come on board but there is quite a lot more out there to be covered. I guess that is part of the beauty, e-payment is still a green field in Nigeria, we are still scratching the surface. A number of SMEs know that e-payment is what they should do but probably have not got their foot out of water.
What is your forecast about online commerce companies boosting e-payment?
That is what I am saying; I will be expecting roughly N1 trillion on a monthly basis because part of what e-payment does is that it increases the velocity of money, it become a lot easier for you to transact businesses. Things you would probably hesitate to taking a ride to go and buy, the mere fact that you can see it online increases your chances of buying it.
And as you are buying it is delivered to you and the person you bought it from now has more money with him too and can buy from the next person and the chain continues like that and it become easier for money to move round the economy and that is part of the good thing that e-payment brings into the economy.
We encourage SMEs to have their accounts registered on the platform. You can define all the fields you want people to give to you when they are making payments to you; you complete it on the screen. Anytime somebody wants to make payments, the person links on your website, complete all the form and they will be able to make payments to you using bank cards, Internet banking or pay using bank branches for those who are probably in remote areas that may not have direct access to the Internet. And you as the collecting organisation, you will have comprehensive records of all the people who have paid you irrespective of how they made the payment.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Chima Akwaja
Quelle/Source: Leadership Newspapers, 08.09.2014
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