The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that it has captured was 5 million people with Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) who are linked to 34,765,546 accounts as of May 31, 2016.
This was disclosed by Ibrahim Hassan, Assistant Director, consumer protection department, CBN, at the weekend, in Lagos, at an interactive enlightenment session with stakeholders on measures taken by the CBN to ensure stability in the financial system and economy.
The bank added that it has as of April 2016 refunded a total of N26.998 billon wrongly charged customers by deposit money banks and was able to resolve over 6,000 complaints out of over 8,000 complaints received and treated.
The CBN said through the cashless policy, it had sought to transform both commercial and retail payments to increase the use of electronic (alternative to cash) channels and as such, instant money transfers through deposit money banks have grown to N10 trillion as of February 2016, from N307 million in the first quarter of 2012.
Also, Agboola Olusola, Assistant Director, banking and payment system department, said in his presentation that point of sales transaction value had risen from a total of N39 million in January 2012 to N46 billion in February 2016, while mobile money operators’ transaction increased from N31 billion in 2012 to N1.1 trillion in April 2016, with 107,571 agents and 29.9 million customers.
In his speech, Issa Aremu, General Secretary of the National Union of Textile Garments and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTW), said the interactive session had been quite useful.
Aremu declared that the CBN, under Godwin Emefiele, has done what labour asked for by insisting that as an import dependent country, Nigeria will not benefit anything from naira devaluation.
“We are happy the CBN has kept to that because any devaluation will have negative impact on workers’ salary,” he said.
