Yesterday, Tuesday marked the end of the deadline given to all bank customers to enroll for the Bank Verification Number (BVN) by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Consequently, banks customers will from today begin to experience restrictions on their accounts specifically, online financial transaction, as the deadline for the BVN exercise ends.
The BVN, which is an initiative of the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee was launched on February 14, 2014. It is a unique identifier for each bank customer across the financial industry, making it possible to build and track customer financial history and activity. This will allow banks access to more reliable information that could inform decisions on customer loan and credit applications and other complex transactions.
The initiative is expected to boost financial inclusion as those who have typically stayed away from mainstream banking due to low literacy levels will be able to open and access their bank accounts using their biometric information rather than traditional identification methods.
The CBN had last year given a directive to all banks to ensure that their customers register for BVN before June 30th, 2015, so as to protect all online financial transactions from fraudulent attacks
Messages have been flying from Deposit Money Banks in the country warning customers about accounts restriction after June 30 deadline.
One of the text messages from one of the banks reads: “dear customer, accounts without BVN will soon be restricted. Enroll for/submit your BVN at any branch from Monday to Saturday”.
Currently, only about 14 million out of about 70 million bank accounts have so far complied, implying that about 62 million accounts may face restriction from banks beginning today.
Seyi Adenmosun, project manager, BVN, Nigerian Inter-bank Settlement Systems Plc (NIBSS) last week said the exercise would soon hit 20million registration as more customers enroll.
“As of today, we have about 14 million unique BVN registered customers. I do not know how many more would register but as June 30 comes, where we used to do an average 400,000 a week, it has shot up to 900,000 per week. I’m sure very soon we would hit 20 million customers”, he said in Lagos at a conference.
Meanwhile the CBN has ruled out any possibility of extending the deadline as it said enough time has been given to customers since last year to enroll for BVN.
“Without BVN, you still have access to your cash but services/facilities (internet/mobile banking, loans etc) will have some restrictions”, Ibrahim Muazu, director, corporate communications department, CBN, said in a chart with BusinessDay.
BVN initiative, when fully implemented, will help to curb arbitrage in the foreign exchange market, Executive Director at Sterling Bank, Abubakar Suleiman, had said.
Suleiman explained that with the BVN, each bank customer will have a unique identification, which will make it easy to prevent people from flouting the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) recent policy on the use of naira denominated debit cards for transactions abroad.
The policy reduced the spending limit on the usage of the naira denominated debit cards for transactions abroad, from $150,000 per person annually, to $50,000 per person annually. The daily cash withdrawal limit on the card was also fixed at $300 per person.
As part of efforts to encourage enrolment for the BVN, the CBN had directed banks to only honour transactions over N100million from customers with BVN from March 2015.
Such transactions, according to the central bank, include but not limited to, money transfers, loans, and contingencies, among others.
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