THE deadline for customers of
Microfinance Banks (MfBs) and Other Financial Institutions (OFIs)
without Bank Verification Number (BVN) linked to their accounts has
elapsed today, January 1,2018.
If the directive by the Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN) earlier in the year is anything to go by, such customers will be
unable to make withdrawals from their accounts henceforth.
The BVN enrolment is a brainchild of the apex bank and the Bankers’ Committee, a body of banks’ managing directors and the CBN.
This
is coming as the initial deadline set for July 31, this year was
extended. The new directive indicated that by December 31, 2017, all
customers of financial institutions operating in the country are
expected to have had their BVN.
The CBN, again, assured Nigerians
that the BVN is geared towards financial system stability, while
ensuring Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) customers are identified and known,
so as to prevent those that will use the banking system as a platform to
carryout illegal activities.
The CBN had in November written a
letter to the Deposit Money Banks in the country, asking them to submit
list of customers and bank accounts without bank verification number.
The
letter came after a Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the CBN and 19
banks to freeze accounts without the BVN and got an interim order
seeking the forfeiture of deposits in the accounts without theBVN, among
others.
Government has said that there were about 45 million
accounts in the banking sector withoutBVN as at February this year.
According to the Nigerian
Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), there were 97.57 million accounts
in the banking system as at February, 2017, with only 51.72 million of
them having BVN. The BVN was introduced in 2014 to ensure that all bank
accounts have biometric identification of their owners.
There is raging debate on the legality or otherwise of the planned forfeiture of funds in such accounts without BVN.
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