BANKING AND PAYMENTS SYSTEM DEPA
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA entral Business District ki. Abuia.

34 - 0946238445 BPSD/DIR/GEN/CIR/01/012 September 18, 2014 To: All Deposit Money Banks and All Licensed Payments Service Providers ELECTRONIC PAYMENTS INCENTIVES SCHEME AND AWARENESS CAMPAIGN In furtherance of the drive for the pervasive usage of electronic payments in Nigeria, the Management of the Central Bank of Nigeria has approved an industry-wide Incentive Scheme and awareness campaign for electronic payments stakeholders and users.

The scheme is primarily focused to reward users of electronic payments in Nigeria and to further encourage greater adoption by all. The incentive scheme will reward and appreciate usage across all channels with emphasis on channels of electronic payments that promote financial inclusion.

The scheme has identified and will reward the following categories of users:

• Consumers
• Merchants
• Sales Persons The incentive scheme and awareness campaign is designed as a "white-label" campaign in which all stakeholders are required to partner.

The implementation schedule, which has taken into consideration, the system configuration that will be required for the successful roll-out of the scheme, is hereby attached.

We solicit for the cooperation of all stakeholders for the successful implementation of the Electronic Payments Incentives Scheme (EPIS).

'Dipo Fatokun Director, Banking and Payments System Department

Implementation Schedule For The E-Payments Incentives Scheme

The following suite of incentives will be implemented:

Merchants
S/N	Incentive	Description	Implementation Date
1.	Reduction of MSC	The Merchants Service Charge (MSC) rate	November 1, 2014
	will be reduced from the current 1.25% or
	N2, 000 to 0.75% or a maximum of N1, 200
	per transaction. The current sharing ratio
	among the various participants will be
	retained.
2.	Commission on	Free COT will be accelerated ahead of the	November 1, 2014
Turnover (COT)	dates on the Guide to Bank Charges, for
Exemption	merchants'. Therefore, all electronic inflows
	into the accounts of Merchants will be
	exempted from the calculation of COT at
	the end of each month.
3	Mystery Shopper and	NIBSS Plc will administer rewards to	November 1, 2014
Recognition	merchants through a mystery shopper and
	recognition campaign.
4	Purchase with Cash-	NIBSS will collaborate with Deposit Money	January 1, 2015
back	Banks (DMBs) for the implementation of
	POS	permit
	functionalities that	will
	merchants to offer cash-out services to
	their customers.

Consumers
S/N	Incentive	Description	Implementation Date
1.	Point Based Reward	This will be adopted to reward cardholders,	December 1, 2014
System	based on point grossed through frequency
	of card usage. NIBSS will implement the
	program, in conjunction with other service
	providers.
2.	Cash Refund	Refund of cash, based on card usage is	On-going
	currently being implemented by all banks.
3	Merchant	Merchants may leverage on the incentive	December 1, 2014
Promotional	scheme to offer promotional gift items to
Campaign	their customers, based on the usage of
	electronic payments for transactions.

Salespersons

Salespersons will be encouraged to support electronic payments by having them enrolled on the tipping point schemes, through which they will earn points accrued over a period. Such points may be redeemed by the salespersons through various gift items or cash.

Efficiency Award

Payments System Services Providers (Banks, PTSPs, PSAD, PTSA, Switches, etc) across the value chain, will be encouraged through periodic awards, based on their innovation and efficiency. This program will be administered by NIBSS, in conjunction with other service providers.