The 24 Deposit Money Banks in the country have expressed their readiness to commence the cashless transactions regime, called ‘operations cash-lite,’ following the full implementation of the Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Number Standard scheme.

A statement made available to our correspondent on Friday said the new number regime had enabled the banks deal with challenges associated with the old non-uniform structure of account numbers, thereby empowering the financial institutions for seamless migration to the cash-lite transaction era.

The new cash-lite policy is billed to commence in Lagos State, the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano and Aba in the first instance, with a go-live date of January 1, 2012, in Lagos.

According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, the scheme will be extended to other parts of the country at a date to be determined by the Bankers’ Committee.

The statement said, “The challenges that were traceable to the non-uniform account structure are being surmounted under the new scheme, such as the challenges posed to the Automated Clearing House. Banks are now ready to promote various forms of electronic payments including cashless transactions due to commence in the country next year.’’

It pointed out that the initial challenges to the NUBAN were increasing cost of clearing, occasioned by the dragging down of the pace of transactions, which had now been resolved.

It added, “The new number scheme has addressed various complaints ranging from payments into wrong accounts resulting from wrongly quoted account numbers by customers and the difficulty and lateness experienced in reversing such errors.

The other issues resolved are abuse of the clearing system, including delays in presenting customer’s instructions in the clearing house, delayed application of inward items by some banks, and late return of unapplied inward items.

“I can tell you that the system has been significantly perfected less than six months of the introduction of the new account number scheme. The clearing house system of the banks is more than ready now to take up more electronic payment transactions at very high efficiency,” it added.

Source: Punch/Ademola Alawiye