Zone surpasses ₦1 trillion in transactions as Nigerian banks embrace blockchain

The zone, the payments infrastructure organization in Nigeria, has processed transaction amounting to over ₦1 trillion through its blockchain network during the time period between November 2022 to December 2024, as stated by the company CEO Obi Emetarom in an interview. Its 100 million transactions were averaging level of about ₦10,000 per transaction. Jeramy, despite the emergence and growth of blockchain in many other applications, mostly all of the bank transactions would have been ATMs, which for Nigeria may be the first time that such payments by using blockchain technology process at a scale.

Low ATM usage is a key milestone. ATM transaction values have dropped in the past three years, decreasing from ₦32.65 trillion in 2022 to ₦28.2 trillion in 2023, as customers move towards POS terminals and digital payments. Currently, twelve banks are on Zone’s blockchain network, but fewer of them use the technology to process transactions at the ATM.

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According to Obi Emetarom, zone CEO and cofounder, the wider acceptance of ATMs would lead to the realization of faster transactions. “We used the ATM as a pilot to introduce something new. We didn’t want to start loading our system with heavy transactions, so we chose a transaction type that is manageable to build a credible system.

While Zone’s network allows these banks to achieve faster settlement rates on ATM transactions, others are in the system for another reason: ZonePoS, which allows them to process POS payments on the blockchain.