The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced a revision of its e-payment pricing policy and said this would take effect from 1 May.

The local FinTech regulator said it is deregulating the Merchant Service Charge (MSC) which is the fee paid by merchants for e-transactions done through Point of Sales (PoS) terminals.

The deregulation will give way to a new pricing regime on electronic transactions or interchange fee by Q2 of 2017.

According to Dipo Fatokun, CBN Director of Banking and Payment System, the move was in response to the limitations of the MSC regime and in tandem with the objectives of the Payments System Vision 2020. He revealed that the CBN consulted with stakeholders in reaching the decision to migrate the payment card to a superior pricing mechanism.

"The new pricing regime would boost payment card issuance, investment in loyalty programmes and the expansion of acquirer network infrastructure across the country," he said. "With the introduction of the Cash-Less Nigeria Project and the release of the Guidelines on PoS Card Acceptance Services, the CBN outlined the MSC and the modalities for the payments system.

"This had enhanced the issuance and utilisation of cards transaction in the country and brought structure to the compensatory mechanism for parties involved in the transaction."