The Bankers’ Committee, comprising top of officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), led by its Governor- Lamido Sanusi, on Monday rose from its meeting with a resolve to cashless policy initiative, which is now across six states and Abuja, would become effective nationwide from June 30, 2014.
The policy commenced, with the Lagos pilot phase in January 2012, before moving to states like Rivers, Kano, Ogun, Aba, and Anambra, as well as FCT, Abuja.
Head Shared Services of CBN, Chidi Umeano, said the launch of the cashless policy was as a result of the success of the trials in Lagos and other states, and also due to the demand of other states to benefit from the exercise.
He said statistics have shown that there has been shift from the traditional cash carrying system to electronic form of payment, including the Nigerian Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), Nigerian Instant Payment (NIP), POS terminal and mobile money.
His words: “As at yesterday the value of transactions that was carried out using NEFT was N153 billion, NIP N37 billion, POS terminal N50 million, Mobile money N12 million, totaling N190.62 billion for a single day”.
Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, First Bank of Nigeria, Bisi Onasanya, while speaking on other decisions taken by the committee, said the committee looked at developments in the global economy and the impact it is beginning to have on the country and then adopted the decisions reached at the last Monetary Policy Committee meeting.
He explained that Nigeria is currently experiencing a regime that is focused on defending the exchange rate, given the dwindling revenue from oil and its impact on foreign reserves.
His words: “Due to this fact, it becomes apparent that the options open to CBN and MPC was reduced, that was why we sanctioned and agreed on the need to further increase the Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR), for public sector deposit from 50 per cent to 75 per cent.
On the biometric initiative of the CBN, Group Managing Director of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe, said that the fact that the CBN and banks in the country are promoting a biometric customer identity means that they are taking Know Your Customer (KYC) initiative to another level.
“The bankers committee under CBN has been working on (KYC) over the past couple of years and the idea is to fight money laundering and encourage consumer lending”, he stated.
Source: Daily Independent (by Bamidele Ogunwusi)
