Ilorin, the commercial capital of Kwara State, is fast becoming a hub of Point of Sale (POS) operators.
Thanks to the frustrating delays many customers experienced in banks coupled with the epileptic services of the Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and the attendant negative effect on business in the cause to withdraw money for various financial transaction, the system has gained wide acceptance among the residents of metropolis.
To this end, many youths and other business oriented individuals across the state have tried to explore the advantage provided by the technological breakthrough in the financial sector to make ends meet and respond to other financial demands.
A walk across the metropolis by North Central Trust shows the extent of the proliferation of this financial service that has revolutionise the banking sector in the country. Many of the operators, some of who engage in other businesses, including students and other artisans have found the environment of the POS a worthwhile venture and a fitting response to the growing unemployment in the country. They are sighted are every 300 meters apart in most cases.
Areas most proliferated are commercial areas like Taiwo, Unity, Murtala and Tanke where there is a large concentration of students because of the location of the University of Ilorin.
But how have these operators fared in the business and what have been the challenges so far with their efforts which has brought many hitherto unbank customers into system and thus contributed a lot to the financial inclusion of the citizens.
According to Alabi Sulyman, who said this was his second year in the business, the unemployment problem in the country has contributed to the proliferation of the POS business.
“Everyone knows the state of the country and its problem of unemployment and everybody is trying to earn a living. If you look at recharge cards also, almost everyone is selling it including food vendors. Same thing is applicable to POS. People are just trying to take advantage of the opportunity that presents itself and you know the government is not ready to offer us anything. But we have to survive and don’t want to steal”, he said.
He said how lucrative the business is depends on the location and terminal one is using adding that the charges of the financial institutions also varies
“Some of their charges are high while some are low. If one is using POS of banks, the profit margin is often low, but those of non-bank financial firms like Opay and others have higher or fairer profit margin.”
He also said with N50,000 one can venture into the business as a starter but lots of risks are invloved.
“At times, one can make a withdrawal for customer and the transaction will be pending whereas it has already been debited the customer’s bank account and you’re yet to be credited. Such a situation can result to misunderstanding between you and the customer. Also at times, you might be victim of fraud from customers who will send a fake bank alert while you have paid them.
He said there was a need for operators to be vigilant not to easily fall victim to fraudsters and they should also not be greedy.
Olagunju Sikiru Oluwaseun attributed the proliferation of the POS in the metropolis to two major reasons.
“The delays by banks has made a lot of people to seek for alternative which is POS. This created a big market for the business and a lot of people saw the opportunity and try to benefit from it.
“The secondly is the high level of unemployment. People in this line of work cut across different age groups, even some of the people in this business are some of those that were retrenched by the government,” he noted.
He said with N200,000 it was enough to start the business adding that the minimum profit an operator can make in a day could be up to N2000 but far more than that when business is good.
“We also face the challenge of infiltration by some unscrupulous people into the business which damaged the trust between us and the customers
“Three weeks ago, some people came to make a withdrawal of the sum of N280,000, while making the transaction, I gave them the POS device to input their pin only for them to cunningly deduct a zero from the figure to make it N28,000 ,so that they will be paying N28,000 into my account while I’m giving them N280,000 in cash. Assuming I wasn’t careful enough to go through the numbers again, I would have been in huge debt now,” he added.
A female operator told North Central Trust that at times, they made as high as N50,000 a day as profit, adding that the security situation now had made them to close early.
“Unlike before, by 6pm now we have closed for the day or even before then because we have heared cases where some of our colleagues have been robbed during late hours,” she explained.
