The Central Bank of Nigeria on Tuesday 6th of December 2022 issued a directive to all deposit money banks and other financial institutions on the new cashless policy. The Apex Bank before now had come up with various measures of encouraging cashless transactions in the country. CBN had launched eNaira digital payment which has received over 500k download as at the time of writing this report, other measures include approval of more agency banking operators to encourage financial inclusion.
According to the statement released by the Apex Bank on the revised withdrawal limits:
- OTC withdrawal for Individuals N100k, for Corporate N500k. Penal for withdrawal above it is 5% individual and 10% corporate.
- No.3rd party cheque above 50k allowed OTC subject to N10m max. for transfer.
- ATM withdrawal is 20k max per day. 100k per week.
- Only N200 denomination to be loaded on ATM machine.
- POS withdrawal is max of 20k.
- No withdrawal shall exceed N5m for ind. & N10m for corp in a month but with charges.
Pros
This is a welcoming development as the new policy will eliminate substantially cash maintenance cost and grow financial inclusion in the country. Payment for goods and services are expected to be done via the PoS, Mobile money or online banking services. For instance, Servpay.ng provides online platform where basic utility bills payments can easily be made with bonuses on every transaction.
Cons
To firm up this policy, the CBN must ensure the commercial banks have uninterrupted digital services. The Apex Bank must come up with clear KPI’s and sanction when poor services are rendered to bank customers. Recently, the banks have been providing very poor digital services across board. Payment transfers are delayed or declined after several hours, failed transactions are never reversed automatically after 24hr. These and many more challenges are what the bank customers are forced to live with.
This new Policy will take effect from 9th of January 2023.
