Nigeria becoming cashless

The adoption of electronic forms of payment in Nigeria is growing at a rapid pace, says allAfrica.com.

Mitchel Elegbe, MD of Interswitch, a payment solutions platform provider with 25 Nigerian banks on its platform, confirmed the network has witnessed increased transactions with the adoption of technology by Nigerians.

He stated that by March 2007, the network witnessed 13.6 million transactions, which increased to 51.2 million as at March 2008.

An innovative cash machine which will enable consumers to top up payment cards and pay bills was unveiled yesterday, states DailyRecord.co.uk.

ATM manufacturer NCR's SelfServ ATM has been designed to be more environmentally friendly - featuring energy saving technology and smaller receipts, which are printed on both sides.

The group said the machine can also restart itself if there is a fault, reducing the need for an engineer to be called out, and cutting the time it is offline from around three to four hours to just 10 to 15 minutes. NCR added that with the machines conserving energy and paper, and requiring fewer engineering call outs, they had a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

Telefonica is bringing banking services for the first time to some of the world's poorest citizens in Latin America, reports Infibeam.com.

A new mobile banking (m-banking) initiative, targeting the 175 million people in the region who have mobile phones but do not currently have banking access, will be delivered in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank.

The project will commence in July and will be rolled out across the region.