Can Nigeria’s ATMs Win Back the Cash Street?
For years, Nigeria's neighbourhood PoS agent has become one of the most visible faces of banking.
Need ₦10,000 urgently? Walk to the kiosk.
Need cash after your bank's ATM has run out of notes? Find the nearest agent.
Need to withdraw money in an area without a functioning bank branch? The PoS terminal down the street may be your easiest option.
But the numbers suggest the ATM is making a comeback.
According to Central Bank of Nigeria data reported from its 2025 Annual Report, ATM transaction volume jumped 61.94% to 1.66 billion transactions in 2025, significantly faster than the growth recorded by PoS transactions, which increased 19.78% to 15.66 billion.
The numbers do not mean PoS agents are losing their relevance. Far from it.
They show something more complicated: Nigerians still want cash, and the battle over where they get that cash — and how much they pay for it — is becoming increasingly important.
The ATM Is Getting More Attention
Nigeria's cash economy has not disappeared despite years of policies designed to encourage electronic payments.
People still need physical money for transport, markets, small businesses, emergencies and places where digital payments are unreliable or unavailable.
The difference is that consumers now have several competing ways of getting it.
There is the bank branch.
There is the ATM.
And there is the neighbourhood PoS agent.
The CBN's revised cash policies, which took effect from January 1, 2026, set a ₦100,000 daily withdrawal limit for ATM and PoS transactions and a ₦500,000 weekly cash withdrawal limit for individuals across channels. Withdrawals above the weekly threshold attract a 3% charge on the excess.
That means ATM and PoS operators are competing within a more tightly regulated cash environment.
Why PoS Agents Took the Street
The rise of PoS agents was not simply about people preferring kiosks to machines.
It solved a practical problem.
An ATM can only help when there is one nearby, functioning, stocked with cash and accepting your card.
A PoS agent can bring cash access into neighbourhoods where formal banking infrastructure may be limited.
Agents also became convenient human intermediaries for customers who needed more than withdrawals, including transfers, deposits and other basic financial services.
The CBN itself recognises agent banking as a financial-inclusion delivery channel designed to provide banking services cost-effectively.
By March 2026, reporting from The Guardian described PoS terminals as effectively becoming neighbourhood retail banking hubs, particularly as Nigerians continued to rely on agents for everyday cash access.
That is a difficult position for ATMs to reverse.
A machine can be faster.
But an agent can be closer.
Then There Is the Question Nobody Likes: The Fee
For the consumer, cash access often comes down to one simple calculation:
How much will it cost me to get my own money?
The CBN reviewed ATM transaction charges in 2025.
From March 1, 2025, withdrawing from your own bank's ATM in Nigeria is not supposed to attract an ATM transaction fee.
But using another bank's ATM can attract ₦100 per ₦20,000 withdrawal at an on-site ATM.
At an off-site ATM, the charge can include the ₦100 fee plus a surcharge of up to ₦500 per ₦20,000, with the surcharge required to be disclosed before the customer completes the withdrawal.
So the ATM is not automatically the cheaper option.
If your own bank's machine is nearby and working, the economics are straightforward.
If the nearest machine belongs to another bank — particularly an off-site machine — the calculation changes.
And this is where PoS agents remain competitive.
Why People Still Pay the Agent
The irony is that PoS fees can feel more painful because they are immediate and visible.
You walk up with your card or transfer the money.
The agent tells you the withdrawal fee.
You pay it.
There is no ambiguity.
But customers are often paying for something beyond the cash itself: convenience.
The agent is close.
The agent may be available when the nearest branch is closed.
The agent may know the neighbourhood.
And when several ATMs are empty, offline or out of service, the agent can become the last practical option.
For many customers, paying a fee is preferable to spending money and time travelling across town looking for a working ATM.
Can ATMs Actually Win the Street Back?
The answer depends less on how many ATMs banks deploy and more on whether those machines work consistently.
A larger ATM network means little to a customer who arrives at a machine and finds:
No cash
Network failure
A damaged card reader
A failed transaction
A machine that is out of service
A queue stretching outside the branch
Reliability is therefore the real competition.
The CBN's 2025 ATM fee review explicitly said the adjustment was intended to address rising operational costs and encourage greater ATM deployment.
If that investment produces more reliable machines in more locations, banks could gradually reclaim some transactions currently handled by agents.
But deployment alone will not be enough.
The PoS Agent Has a Different Business Model
An ATM is infrastructure.
A PoS agent is infrastructure plus a person.
That distinction matters.
An agent can explain what happened when a transaction fails.
They can tell customers when a network comes back.
They can provide other services around the cash withdrawal.
They can also move their business to where customers are.
That flexibility makes the PoS network difficult to displace completely.
The CBN has consequently been tightening the regulatory framework around agent banking rather than eliminating the channel.
Its agent-banking rules include a ₦100,000 daily cash-out limit per customer and a ₦1.2 million daily cumulative cash-out limit per agent, alongside requirements around agent terminals, float accounts and reporting.
The objective is to make agent banking more controlled without removing the channel's financial-inclusion role.
The Bigger Battle Is Not ATM vs PoS
It is tempting to frame the situation as a competition between machines and people.
But the real competition is over the cost and reliability of last-mile financial access.
Banks want customers to use their digital channels because electronic transactions reduce the cost and complexity associated with physical cash.
Customers, however, will continue to use cash whenever their daily lives require it.
And when they need cash, they will choose the channel that is:
closest + available + reliable + affordable.
That could be an ATM.
It could be a PoS agent.
Or increasingly, it could be neither if merchants become more comfortable accepting transfers, cards and other digital payments.
Who Is Actually Paying for Cash Access?
There are several layers to the answer.
The customer may pay a direct ATM fee when using another bank's machine.
A customer may also pay a PoS agent a service charge.
The agent has operating costs, including liquidity, connectivity, equipment and the cost of maintaining sufficient cash.
Banks and ATM deployers also bear the costs of deploying, maintaining, securing and replenishing machines.
Ultimately, those costs have to be recovered somewhere through the financial system.
That is why the question should not simply be:
“Why am I being charged to withdraw my own money?”
A better question is:
“Which cash-access model delivers the service at the lowest sustainable cost while remaining available when I need it?”
What the ATM Comeback Could Mean
The rise in ATM transaction volume is significant, but it should not be interpreted as the death of PoS.
In fact, PoS transaction volume also reached 15.66 billion in 2025, showing just how deeply agent banking has become embedded in Nigeria's payments ecosystem.
The more likely outcome is coexistence.
ATMs could handle more routine withdrawals, particularly around banks, malls, transport hubs and other high-traffic locations.
PoS agents could remain essential in neighbourhoods and communities where human assistance and proximity matter more.
Digital payments could continue taking transactions away from both.
And consumers will move between all three depending on the situation.
Nigeria may not be choosing between cash and digital payments as neatly as policymakers once imagined.
Instead, the country is building a hybrid financial system in which cash, ATMs, PoS agents, bank apps and instant transfers coexist.
The ATM's growing transaction numbers suggest that machines still have a role to play.
But winning back the street will require more than installing more machines.
Banks will have to make ATMs reliable, accessible, well-stocked and competitively priced.
Because Nigerians have already demonstrated something important:
They will pay for convenience — but they will also move to whoever makes getting their money easiest.
When you need cash, what do you use most — your bank's ATM, another bank's ATM or a PoS agent? And how much are you usually charged?
Tell us your experience in the comments.
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