According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the new cash withdrawal restrictions are an extension of the cashless policy launched in 2012.
The new policy was introduced in recognition of the positive changes that have occurred in the financial and payment system since the cashless policy was first introduced ten years ago, according to CBN’s Deputy Governor of Financial System Stability, Aisha Ahmad, who testified before the House of Representatives on Thursday.
Aisha informed the audience that some of the changes include a broad spread of payment systems, including agent banking, bank branches, micro-finance bank branches, POS terminals, ATMs, and many more choices.
She said:
“Today, we have a very robust payment system that includes bank branches, branches of micro-finance banks, POS machines, ATMs, agent banking, e-Naira and many other options.
“To be specific, between the bank and the micro-finance banks, we have 6,500 locations, 900,000 POS terminals, 14,000 ATMs across the country and 1.4 million agents nationwide; and every local government area in Nigeria has agents represented. We have also seen a proliferation of electronic transactions.
“Just by way of a quick example, in 2012, we had N48bn in POS transactions. Today, we have N6tn in POS transactions. On electronic transfers, we had N3tn in 2012; today we have N300tn as at October 2022. That is a 7,000 per cent increase.
“We have also seen an improvement in financial inclusion to 64.1 per cent and lastly, perhaps, more importantly, we have seen the evolution of the Nigerian payment system on the global stage. Nigeria is adjudged 6th in the world for an instant, real payment and we are only behind countries like India, China, Thailand, Brazil and South Korea. We are the only African country in the top 10 and this has been as a result of some of the initiatives that have gone on.
“Also, electronic payment and real-time data payments have been estimated to contribute about 0.67 per cent to our GDP.”