By ELVIS EROMOSELE

Step outside your home in Lagos, Kano, or Port Harcourt, and walk twenty meters. Under a frayed umbrella, seated on a plastic chair with a small banner, you will find a "POS operator." These operators are the capillaries of Nigeria's cash-dependent economy, pumping naira notes into the hands of millions. When commercial bank branches shrank, and automated teller machines (ATMs) consistently ran dry, these retail entrepreneurs stepped in. They brought financial services within reach of the poorest farmer and the busiest market woman, effectively humanising fintech for tens of millions of citizens.

But today, the street-corner cash merchants are facing a perfect storm. What was once a highly lucrative blue-ocean opportunity has devolved into a hyper-competitive race to the bottom. Estimates suggest Nigeria now has well over 1.5 million mobile money agents, possibly more than the entire West African sub-region combined.

Walk down any street in an urban hub, and you will see four, five, or six operators clustered within shouting distance of each other, thin-slicing margins that are already compressed by platform fees. When multiple neighbours on the same street split the daily traffic, revenue per operator crashes. Many now earn less than the minimum wage, and the dream of easy money is fading.

Visit any POS agent today, and you will hear the same laments. Sourcing naira notes amidst inflation and cash scarcity causes severe "float fatigue," often requiring hours in bank queues or paying a premium. Network nightmares and telecom downtimes stop an agent's income instantly. Rising fraud and crime have forced many to operate behind iron grilles, while fintechs like OPay, PalmPay, and Moniepoint slash commission rates as they chase corporate profitability.

Furthermore, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has aggressively moved to formalise and secure the sector, implementing a strict single-principal exclusivity rule. Historically, an agent could survive network downtimes by juggling multiple terminals. Under the new regulatory framework, that flexibility is illegal. Agents are required to affiliate with a single licensed provider, register with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), and operate from fixed, geo-fenced coordinates. When your lone service provider goes down, your business comes to a standstill.

Yet, the most dangerous competitor to the traditional POS vendor is an invisible shift in technology and consumer behaviour. The heavy, dedicated plastic terminal, susceptible to battery degradation and printer jams, is growing obsolete. The emergence of SoftPOS (Software POS) and near-field communication (NFC) means any mid-range Android smartphone can now function as a payment collection point. Merchants no longer need to pay an upfront hardware lease; they can accept payments via card taps or phone-to-phone interactions instantly.

Concurrently, the customer base for cash-out services is shrinking because local grocery stores, boutiques, and pharmacies are bypassing the intermediary. Instead of a shopper visiting a POS kiosk to withdraw cash for a vendor, the vendor now displays their own account details, smart terminal, or dynamic QR code. With peer-to-peer transfers becoming faster and more reliable via instant-payment rails, young Nigerians have largely abandoned ATM cards for phone numbers. Why walk to an agent under a tree when you can buy bread and pay via a banking app from your chair? I recently saw a young man pay a keke fare of N300 only with a transfer to the driver.

So, what happens next? Will the ubiquitous POS agent go the way of the payphone and the cybercafé? The future is not necessarily the death of the agent, but it is unequivocally the death of the simple "cash-out" point.

To my mind, the industry faces three likely paths of evolution:

One, the hybrid merchant-agent: Standalone POS kiosks will fade. Instead, every shop, from a tailor to a tea seller, will double as an agent, making agency banking an add-on service rather than a primary income.

Two, the Cashless Cliff: If the CBN accelerates its cashless policy and mobile money interoperability reaches its peak, physical cash demand could collapse, rendering the core cash-in/cash-out service obsolete.

And three consolidation into micro-branches (The Sustainable Path): Future POS agents will become "super-agents." Moving from basic human ATMs into full-service digital micro-branches, they will leverage their deeply rooted community trust to cross-sell sophisticated financial products:

For this ecosystem to survive with dignity, self-regulation must restrict terminal density to prevent cannibalisation. Furthermore, fintech providers must invest in agent training, fraud protection, and fair commission structures rather than mere device saturation.

The Nigerian POS operator has been a grassroots financial miracle born of necessity. However, the era of making a comfortable living by simply sitting under an umbrella with a plastic card reader and a backpack full of cash is rapidly closing. The POS ecosystem isn't disappearing, but it is growing up. The operators who view these changes as an invitation to elevate into comprehensive neighbourhood financial hubs will find longevity.

Those who cling strictly to the legacy cash paradigm risk being automated out of existence by the very digital revolution they helped start.

•Eromosele, a corporate communications expert and sustainability advocate, wrote via: elviseroms@gmail.com

Update news