Effective May 2017, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will begin to implement a new pricing regime in the payment space, called the interchange fee, which replaces the Merchant Service Charge (MSC).
The introduction of the new pricing regime will bring about greater payment card issuance and utilisation, investment in loyalty programme and expansion of acquirer network infrastructure across the country.
In a circular singed by Dipo Fatokun, director, banking and payments system, the CBN decided to migrate the payment card industry to a superior pricing mechanism after consultation with industry stakeholders due to limitations of the MSC regime and the objectives of the payment system vision 2020.
Consequently, the CBN has given a period of six months starting from November 2016 to stakeholders to sensitise their merchants on the changes, and the card schemes to reconfigure their systems to reconfigure their systems to the new pricing structure.
Following the introduction of cashless Nigeria project and the release of the guidelines on PoS card acceptance service, the CBN outlined the merchant service charge and the modalities for its operation in the payment system.
According to the CBN, this has enhanced the issuance and utilisation of cards transaction in the country and brought structure to the compensatory mechanisms for parties involved in the transaction.
To the CBN, the Payments Terminal Service Aggregator and Payment Terminal Services Provider (PTSP) are considered as mandatory and essential services that are licensed and regulated by the CBN.
