How a bank wins back merchant collections: transaction intermediation vs deposit mobilisation

It is the Monday review of a head of SME banking. Retail deposits are up. The merchant book is flat. In the branch next door to a busy market, a shop owner has two terminals on her counter, and only one of them is the bank's.

The short answer

Deposits and collections are not the same thing. A bank can grow deposits and still lose the moment a sale is made. To win collections back, the bank has to be present where the sale is confirmed: on the till, the table and the owner's phone. Then every sale needs to settle into the merchant's account at that bank, with nothing to chase.

What the numbers say, and what they hide

Retail deposits at six major banks reached ₦39.01 trillion in FY2025, up 24.0% from ₦31.46 trillion in 2024 (Nairametrics, 3 Jun 2026). That is a strong year for banks. One analyst, Uyomi Eya of Norrenberger, said in the same report: "Banks continue to benefit from strong current and savings accounts (CASA) franchises."

The same article carries a warning. Festa Ndubuogaranya of Rhodium Capital described what fintechs do today as "transaction intermediation, not deposit mobilisation." He added that "the inflection point arrives when fintechs transition from pass-through wallets to primary stores of value."

Read those two ideas together. Deposit mobilisation is money that comes to rest in your bank. Transaction intermediation is owning the moment money moves, which is the moment a merchant makes a sale. Fintechs are strong at that moment at the counter. The analyst's point is that the shift to holding balances has not yet happened, and that is the gap a bank can still close.

Why merchants left bank POS

Merchants do not leave because of a strategy paper. They leave over the daily friction at the counter. The Whistler spoke to retail stores in Abuja about why they moved. The reasons they gave include:

• Slow alerts. Notifications that can take one to two days to appear.
• Network failures. A pharmacy representative said: "The most painful aspect of using bank POS is network failures and delays when doing transactions."
• Slow repairs. When a terminal fails, card sales stop until an agent arrives.
• Charges seen as unfair, set against alternatives.
• Slow access to funds. Some funds take a day or more to settle.

A representative at another Abuja business put the other side: "But with these fintech companies, transfers are instant and we rarely experience network problems." The article is undated, so treat it as a picture of the complaint, not of today's service at any one bank.

Banks have responded. Legit.ng reports that one large bank removed POS processing fees to win back small merchants, and that several large banks have upgraded their apps over two years. The same article notes the CBN has granted national operating licences to OPay, PalmPay and Moniepoint, and that licensed fintechs must hold a ₦5 billion minimum capital base. It also reports that analysts expect a hybrid market where banks and fintechs coexist. Fintechs lead on user experience, fast onboarding and agent banking. Banks keep their balance sheets, corporate relationships and lending.

So a fee cut answers one complaint, the charge. It does not answer the other four, which are about speed and certainty at the counter.

What actually moves collections

A relationship manager is scored on net new deposits, client acquisition, fee income and the loan book. Collections feed all four, but only when three things are true:

1. The sale is confirmed where the merchant works. If the merchant still checks an app or an SMS to learn a transfer arrived, they will keep the faster terminal.
2. Settlement is automatic and visible. The merchant sees which sale each naira belongs to, not a lump sum with a narration.
3. The bank is the home of the day, not a line item. A merchant who runs stock, staff and shifts on a tool that settles into your bank has a reason to keep the balance there.

The third point matters most for deposits. A merchant who has to leave your bank to run their business will leave it. A merchant whose business runs on something your bank handed them will not.

A short plan for a relationship manager

1. Ask how the merchant knows a transfer has arrived (see What should a relationship manager ask a merchant first?).
2. Find where the merchant's second terminal sits and what it does that yours does not.
3. Offer the tool for the counter and the table, not only the account.
4. Check, a month later, whether the average balance moved. That is your evidence, not the launch day numbers.

How Jollozi gives a bank that place at the counter

Jollozi is a platform that runs a business and gets it paid. A bank offers it to business customers, and the merchant signs up with their account at that bank.

• On the till. A transfer through FlashPay is approved by the guest in their own bank app, and the sale marks itself paid on Jollozi POS. Nobody checks an alert or reads a screen.
• At the table. On Jollozi Table, guests scan a QR code, order, split the bill by items or evenly, and pay from their phone. The table shows as paid.
• In the account. Sales settle into the merchant's account at the partner bank through FlashPay. That is where the collection lands.
• For the owner. Shifts with a blind cash count, day close, staff PINs and roles, stock alerts and an owner's phone app. The business runs on the same tool that collects for it. Jollozi POS also works offline and syncs when the network returns.
• For the bank. Using merchant trading data for lending, with the merchant's consent, is planned and not live today. Jollozi names it that way on purpose: it is a direction, not a feature you can sell this quarter.

Jollozi does not replace card or cash. They stay. It makes the transfer something the till can confirm.

Talk to Jollozi about a bank partnership

If you lead SME or merchant banking and want to see a till where transfers confirm themselves, ask Jollozi for a walk-through of Jollozi for banks, or try the till first at till.jollozi.com/demo.