POS (profit on suffering)

2025-06-30

Where ATMs failed, a new figure emerged to fill the gap. The POS agent. Dressed in plastic aprons or hunched beneath umbrellas, they now form the visible spine of financial access for millions. But what looks like inclusion is merely survival dressed as progress. The POS boom is not innovation. It is evidence of decay.

POS agents exist because the banking system retreated. Banks found it too costly or inconvenient to maintain infrastructure in rural and low-income areas. Rather than invest in functioning ATMs or functional branches, they opened the floodgates for third-party agents to handle cash withdrawals and deposits. In doing so, they passed their responsibilities onto the street.

This would not be alarming if the system were fair. But it is not.

POS agents charge per transaction. Charges are not standardised and vary by region, cash availability, or mood. Some charge a flat rate. Others adjust based on demand, fuel scarcity, weather, or personal greed. In times of cash shortage, these charges can soar. It is common to pay one hundred to five hundred naira just to withdraw five thousand. That is a ten percent toll on your own money. Paid to someone who bought the cash from a bank that already charged you to access it.

This is not inclusion. It is layered exploitation.

The banks still benefit. They charge the agents per transaction and offload risk and infrastructure maintenance. The banks do less and earn more. The agents do more and earn little. The customers lose both time and money.

And yet, in the grand theatre of Nigerian banking, this is framed as innovation. As entrepreneurship. As financial empowerment. But the reality is bleak. POS agents are not solving a problem. They are the symptom of one. They are unpaid proxies standing in for a system that has refused to function.

Even more troubling is the lack of oversight. POS agents operate with minimal regulation. Fraud is common. Failed reversals are frequent. Card skimming and PIN theft occur without consequences. And when something goes wrong, there is no redress. Banks disown the transaction. Agents deflect. The customer is left stranded.

In many parts of the country, POS agents are the only form of access to cash. This should not be celebrated. It should be condemned. The presence of a human ATM should not be a substitute for a working banking system.

This is the privatisation of ATM failure. A market built on institutional absence. An entire industry founded on making people pay for what should have been free.

The POS agent is not your saviour. They are a cog in a larger machine of economic abandonment. Their success is a mirror reflecting the failure above.

Innovation did not bring POS to the streets. Neglect did.