Without BVN, your bank will not attend to you

Without having the Biometric Identification Number (BVN) recently introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), it will be difficult for you to do certain transactions in your bank now.

Banks since last week insist that customers produce their BVN before being allowed to carry out some transactions including Western Union Money Transfer; MoneyGram or even any transaction relating to fixed deposits.

This follows a circular by the apex bank the previous week directing all deposit banks to use BVN as prerequisite for transactions. Customers who went to their banks last were shocked that they were not allowed some transactions without BVN.

A customer who went to the Okota Branch of UBA said “I had actually done my biometrics before now. But I have forgotten the number my bank sent to me until I went to do Moneygram in UBA and they requested for it.

“At the end I had to meet the officer-in-charge of BVN who requested for my details to give me back my BVN code. This is what I did to be allowed to do my transactions.”

BVN is a biometric identification of customers in the financial industry launched by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in February 2014, which is aimed at revolutionising the payment system in the country. The introduction of BVN authentication is targeted at addressing cyber crime, ATM fraud and other kinds of financial frauds as well as to safeguard customers’ funds to avoid losses through compromise of Personal Identification Numbers (PIN).

According to Isaac Okoroafor, acting director, corporate communications, CBN, BVN is a number that enables one person to have a single identity within the financial system.

“We came up with this to achieve a few things; people who cannot read and write to use their biometrics which cannot be replicated, to tackle incidence of identity theft and enable banks to really identify their customers in the overall context of Know Your Customer (KYC) initiative,” Okoroafor says.

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