Nigeria has been ranked sixth on a list of top 10 countries globally in terms of real-time payment transactions in 2021. 

Nigeria followed countries such as India, which retained the top spot with 25.5 billion real-time payment transactions and China with 15.7 billion deals. South Korea came third with 6.0 billion, Thailand (fourth) with 5.2 billion and the UK (fifth) with 2.8 billion. 

Other countries on the list are Japan in seventh place with 1.7 billion deals, Brazil (eighth) with 1.3 billion transactions, and the United States with 1.2 billion deals.

The data came from a global research from ACI Worldwide and GlobalData. 

Nigeria largely operates through the NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) platform, launched in 2011. The platform allows users to make transfers round the clock through internet and mobile banking, bank branches, kiosks, mobile USSD, POS terminals and ATMs. 

The NIP platform has been available for retail and corporate customers with maximum daily transaction limits.  

Business Insider described the payment as “the most developed real-time payments scheme in Africa” as the instant payments platform has experienced strong adoption compared to other electronic payment types, making up 72.6 per cent of all electronic payments in 2020. 

The report was based on the prime-time for real-time research, which sampled global real-time account-to-account payment volumes and forecasts using 48 markets. 

According to the research, real-time payment volumes in Nigeria spiked in 2020, linking the increase to the onset of COVID-19.