The Association of Point of Sale Service Providers (POS) may suspend and cripple banking operations in the country if the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection (FCCPC) fail to immediately intervene in the alleged exclusivity practice by Verve International and Interswitch Limited.
The association made the disclosure in a statement signed by its Communications Consultant, Yomi Idowu.
According to Idowu, the POS operators had written a letter to protest the alleged persistent unlawful decisions of the two companies, noting that the actions of Verve and Interswitch negate “extant rules and regulations of the CBN and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPC), 2018.”
The association emphasised that “as representatives of a coalition comprising several CBN licenced payment acceptors/acquirers, processors and switches,” they would have no option than to suspend acceptance/acquiring, processing and switching of Verve Card transactions.
It added that the decision became unavoidable due to the persistent and escalating unlawful conduct of Verve International and Interswitch Limited, which “jointly undermine the integrity of Nigeria’s payments ecosystem, erode the capital base of participating institutions and violate several regulatory requirements.”
The association highlighted the breaches to include maintenance of an exclusive monopoly over verve transaction processing; abuse of dominant position in the domestic card scheme market contrary to Section 72 of the FCCPC Act and Section 3,4,7,3 of the CBN Guidelines on Operation of Electronic Payment Channels; imposition of scheme fees in excess of the regulated Merchant Service Commission (MSC) share attributable to Acquirers under extant CBN regulations; and unauthorised and unlawful debits from settlement accounts of Acquirers and Processors/Switches.
The association recalled that its members contributed immensely to building the acceptance and growth of Verve cards at enormous cost to its members in compliance with CBN regulations without subsidy from Verve and Interswitch.
