Digital Banking: GTBank reports N3.89trn USSD transactions in 2020
Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (GTBank) has reported N3.89trillion total value of transactions on its Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) in 2020.
This is an increase of 9.4 per cent to N3.55trillion reported in 2019.
The breakdown revealed that N261.08billion worth of USSD transactions was carried out by customers of GTBank in January and it increased to N269.09billion in February. It also increased in March to N287.91billion and dropped significantly to N212.15billion in April.
According to GTBank report, the USSD transactions was at N275.86billion and N318.95billion between May and June respectively.
In the remaining half of 2020, the USSD of GTBank transactions was at N380.06billion in July but dropped to N361.06billion in August.
In addition, the USSD transaction in September dropped further to N399.11billion and increased significantly to N367.76billion and N379.30 billion between October and November respectively.
In addition, the bank reported N432.95billion value of USSD transactions in December.
The bank also disclosed that total volume on its USSD rose by 37.2 per cent to 790million in 2020 as against 575.8million in 2019.
The lender in its presentation to investors/analysts stated that total number of USSD unique users grew by 13.1 per cent from 6.1million in 2019 to 6.9million in 2020 while total number of active Users on the USSD platform also increased by 900,000 users or 18.8 per cent from 4.8million in 2019 to 5.7million in 2020.
The bank said total value of Mobile Banking transactions gained 48.3 per cent to N15.2trillion in 2020 from N10.2trillion in 2019 while volume of transaction on its mobile banking rose by 48 per cent to 222.7million in 2020 from 150.8million in 2019.
On internet banking, GTBank in its report stated that total value of transaction closed 2020 at N2.56trillion, 21.3 per cent increase over N2.11trillion reported in 2019, while total volume dropped by 7.8 per cent to 10.9mllion from 11.8 million reported in 2019.
Interestedly, GTBank’s E-channel income dropped 24.9 per cent to N11.77billion in 2020 from N15.66 billion in 2019.
GTBank in 2020 had 21.9 million customers with 30 e-branches and cash centres. The bank also had 24,115 active POS terminal, 5.43 million active cards users, 576 million unique *737* banking transactions and 845,620 unique mobile app users.
The Chief Executive Officer, GTBank, Mr. Segun Agbaje had said the bank would continue focusing on caring about human feelings to win the digital payment space in future.
He said, “I will be lying if I tell you that the bank that will win the payment space in future is one with the best technology.
“So, the person that is going to win, whether a FINTECH, a TELCO or a bank, is one that is going to build the right technology that can leave customers with that feeling that there are people who care about them and not artificial intelligence.”
The CEO said the bank was well placed to win, as it had the required digital platforms. “We have GT-Connection, GTPay, GABS-Lite, we have all the digital platforms required.
“In addition, we have ‘Habari,’ a digital platform for children. No matter what the people say, it is the most successful interactive platform in Nigeria today.
“On it we have music, on it we have E-Commerce, on it we have the credit, we have the most successful of all endowed things on that platform.
“We are going to put travels, event management and you are going to come into our ecosystems and you will believe that we care about you,” Agbaje said.
The CEO said another reason that the bank was going to win was that it never stopped interacting with people.
According to him, the idea of Fashion and Food fair is so that the bank can engage with small businesses that are in those segments. For each of these events, we bring more than 250,000 people in two days and continue to engage them and try to understand what they want.
“So already, we are beginning to put that balance together between a digital platform and a human experience; we care about our people and we have the ability to build a successful business platform,” he said.
Agbaje said what was driving the payment space was the people and SMEs. “We have 180 million SMEs in Africa doing 4.5 billion transactions a day, so when you take the young population, you take the huge proliferation of SMEs that you have, then you see the engine of growth that is really driving the payment space,” he said.
