The number of people in Nigeria who have a Bank Verification Number (BVN) has been revealed.
Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor stated that only 57.4 million out of over 200 million Nigerians have BVN.
The CBN Governor was represented by the Director Monetary Policy Department of the CBN, Dr. Hassan Mahmoud.
He said, “With a total enrolment of 57,431,355 as of 31st March 2023, the BVN is supporting the development of credit profiles for banking customers, which will assist in improving access to credit for credit-worthy borrowers by banks.”
Emefiele said the CBN will continue to support the aggressive enrolment of prospective banking customers in the informal sector onto the BVN system. The BVN has continued to feature in the bank’s Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements as part of plans to ease the constraint associated with poor identification of banking customers.
The Deputy Director, Payment System Management Department of the CBN, Adefuye Adeyemi, also at the seminar in Calabar, said the regulatory bank was determined to boost Nigeria’s payment system standard by upscaling e-payment infrastructure.
Adeyemi said, “We have always had the vision to drive e-payment adoption in Nigeria. We want to reduce the volume of Naira in circulation because it is actually a gain for the regulator.
“It is not only the printing of currency that costs money; management and operation of currency in circulation cost the regulator (CBN) a lot of money.
“The more we drive e-payment adoption, the lower the cost of printing and management of currency in the economy.”
“From cash-based economy to cashless economy, and now to e-payment; we have made progress.
“If we want our payment system to be internationally recognized, we must benchmark it against international standards.
”The principle of financial market infrastructure is that we should adopt international standards,” he said.
