PoS Terminals GPS Tracking: CBN Gives October Deadline for enforcement

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• Orders Banks, Fintech Firms to Make GPS Tracking Mandatory

By Bonny Amadi

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has given banks, fintech companies and other licenced payment operators October 20, deadline for commencement of enforcement on GPS tracking for PoS terminals.

As a result, the Nigerian apex bank has ordered banks, fintech companies and other licensed payment operators to install GPS tracking devices on all Point of Sale (PoS) terminals, in a bid to tighten oversight of electronic transactions.

The directive was contained in a circular signed by Rakiya Yusuf, director of the payments system supervision department, dated 25 August.

The CBN said all PoS devices must have “native geo-location services enabled, with Double-Frequency GPS receivers for reliable geo-location service.”

Operators are required to register each terminal with a payment terminal service aggregator and provide accurate coordinates of the merchant or agent’s business location.

The new rules mean every PoS machine must capture and transmit its location data at the start of a transaction.

Activity outside a 10-metre radius of the registered business or service point will be flagged, while terminals that are not geo-tagged will be barred from processing payments.

The regulator said existing machines must be tagged within 60 days, and new devices must be tagged before certification and activation.

“Geo-location data must be captured at transaction initiation and included in the message payload as a mandatory reporting field: Terminals not directly routed to a PTSA are not permitted to transact.

“All existing terminals and newly registered terminals must ensure strict adherence always to approved MSC code per sector: All existing terminals must be geo-tagged within 60 days of this circular; new terminals going forward must be geo-tagged before certification and activation,” the circular read.

The measures come amid a surge in the use of PoS machines across Nigeria. Once considered an alternative, PoS agents have become a central part of the country’s cash economy, handling millions of payments daily as banks cut branch networks and ATMs often run dry.