Nigerian online payment processing industry is growing rapidly. The industry is fast evolving, merchants need to sign up for a corporate account with a Bank and use their payment gateway to process payments. This is most reliable means of receiving payments in Nigeria. Again, merchant can also sign up with a third party payment aggregator to receive payment online.
Online payment industry, as a new industry that is just evolving has been facing a lot of challenges and setbacks despite its growth. So, here are top 5 challenges facing Nigeria online payment processors and aggregators
- High usage cost
Use of a Bank as a payment processor comes with lots of difficulties. Payment aggregators try to combine the functionalities of banks’ payment gateways to simplify the entire account setup, Certification and KYC process. However, this has resulted to high cost usage attributed to payment aggregators.
- Incomplete settlements
One thing commonly seen among different payment gateways and aggregators is incomplete transaction settlements. Incomplete transaction settlements are discrepancies seen between the amount credited to merchant’s bank account and payment gateway log or transaction log.
Merchants are therefore advised to always reconcile the amount on the transaction log, payment gateway log and the amount credited to their Bank otherwise, so many funds will be hanging especially when the huge transaction is made. When merchant is not able to do this on his own, I advise the merchant to hire someone to take care of the reconciliation.
- Fraud and internet theft
There is high rate of internet fraud; using stolen or hacked international debit/credit cards on Nigeria online payment gateways. This has cost our payment processors and aggregators Millions of Dollars over a very short time. Some Banks and processors have to continually upgrade their security features. Some of them at a point have to deactivate all accounts on International payment processing while others have to request for extra revalidation of the Merchant KYC to be on the safe side. This has made getting international card acceptance difficult in some cases.
I advise customers to understand this especially when it is taking their time to verify Merchant for International card acceptance sigh up.
- Poor customer support services
Most payment processors and payment aggregators are facing challenge of good customer support. They lack excellent customer service to offer dedicated support. I advice they outsource for technical support like an IT company who will be willing and able to assist customers doing the coding and other technical questions customers might be asking.
- Poor marketing and general acceptance
So many new Nigerians companies and multinational payment processors and aggregators are still striving to gain ground in Nigeria online payment gateway industry. Some of them are facing the challenge of being generally accepted.
That is why at naijaonlinebiz.com, we are out to promote any new online payment processor or aggregator. So, I will advice you allow help you advertise your new or old online payment gateway that has been relegated to the background while it has many unique features and advantage over other online payment portal.
For your questions and comments, you can use comment box below.
I usually used to be so scared of online payments until I got to realize it was an amazing way to make a payment, send and receive funds! However, there may still be cases of online frauds and all but I still do prefer online payment methods. With this, I say a big thanks for the information that you have here. I was doing some research and this got me here. Thanks!