The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and banks, under the support of the Bankers’ Committee, have concluded plans to simplify the requirements for the Bank Verification Number (BVN) for certain types of transactions.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said the introduction of the BVN Lite is aimed at giving access to the country’s unbanked population who are most residents of rural communities with limited documents to open a bank account.
“For our brethren in local communities, we think that by being allocated the BVN Lite, they would be automatically migrated into the banking system,” the CBN Governor said at the end of a two-day annual Bankers’ Committee retreat at Ogun State.
The BVN which is a biometric identification system implemented by the CBN to curb illegal banking transactions in Nigeria is a security measure aimed at reducing fraud in the banking system.
“Some of our brethren that are doing the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme or the Social Investment Programme, we believe we can use the BVN Lite as an arrangement so that everybody can be financially included and can conduct banking transactions,” Emefiele said, stating that the important thing is “we can have a view of total number of people in the financially included.”
Speaking at the Bankers’ retreat with the theme, “Delivering Inclusive Growth: Leveraging Digital Finance, the CBN Governor said: “What it entails is to reclassify and segregate transactions that can be held by BVN. For instance, we have two classifications. The existence BVN requirement that we have in the system has almost about 18 lines of information that are required, and where your 10 prints and fingers are taken to ensure that all transactions that you take are within the banking system.”
Giving details of the BVN classification, the apex bank revealed that while there is already BVN classic and BVN premium, the BVN Lite will be established specifically for people who are financially excluded.
However, under the BVN Lite, Emefiele pointed out that the number of transactions to be carried out by such persons would be limited.
“BVN as it is today, we have close to 40 million people enrolled on the platform. We think that because of the benefits of the BVN today to bank customers and, indeed, to the economy, there is need to move to what is called BVN 2.0,” the CBN boss said.
“Here, minimal information about the person will be held. What is means is that if you are classified a BVN Lite, then there is a limit to the kind of transactions you can conduct in the banking sector, maybe in terms of deposit or loans.”
