Nigerians have voted the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) as the most visible reform of the banking sector.

This was gsathered via a weekly economic poll conducted by leading polling organisation, NOI Polls Limited.

The NOI said that the poll showed that majority of Nigerians (91 per cent) identified the introduction of the ATM as the most significant reform in the banking sector over the last decade.

According to the statement, other key changes brought about by the reforms in order of importance are the Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Number -NUBAN (44 per cent); Internet banking (42 per cent), Point of Sale-PoS (32 per cent) and Mobile Money Services (23 per cent). Further findings from the poll revealed that the ATM services are the most used form of electronic banking services as indicated by majority of the respondents (68 per cent). This is followed by 10 per cent of the respondents who indicated they use Mobile Money and this is mostly true for bank customers in the South-West (19 per cent) and South-South (17 per cent) zones.

The statement also revealed that respondents identified PoS (6 per cent), Internet banking (6 per cent), and Credit Card (2 percent) as other electronic banking services mainly used by customers. However, according to the findings, 18 per cent of bank customers do not use any of these services.

The Banking Sector Reform was launched in 2004 with the aim of having a more efficient and reliable banking sector to enable better security of customer’s monies and strengthen growth potential in banks business operations. As part of the reforms, the cashless policy was introduced in 2012 to reduce the high risks attached to currency management in the country and also to intensify the national payments system.

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