As part of an ongoing plan to sanitise the Nigerian banking sector, the CBN has asked all bank customers to verify their accounts to ensure they still own them. This, however, has created problems for Nigerians in the diaspora who cannot go to their high street branches and earlier this year, they stormed the high commission seeking to do it there.
Data management company Online Integrated Solutions (OIS), began offering the service at the high commission's office in Fleet Street in London for a token charge of £30. Under the arrangement, diasporans with bank accounts in Nigeria just had to show up and provide their names and have their photographs taken and the information is then forwarded on to their banks in Nigeria, who will automatically verify their accounts.
For now the programme has only been launched in the UK but OIS intends to extend it to other countries with large Nigerian populations. To ensure diasporans al allowed to participate in the process, Ibrahim Mu’azu, the CBN's director of corporate communications,, explained that the extension was to enable customers complete the enrolment as well as link the BVN to their respective accounts.
He added d that the extension was only for customers in the diaspora and advised deposit money banks to ensure that the exemption was utilised by the targeted group only. In addition, Mr Mu'azu advised the banks to remind their customers of the need to link their BVN with their accounts if they had done the enrolment at another bank.
Mr Mu'azu added: “The CBN has also expressed satisfaction with the progress made in the implementation of the BVN project, especially for accounts operated by residents of Nigeria. However, with the expiration of the October 31 enrolment deadline, the CBN has directed that bank accounts of Nigeria residents without the BVN would henceforth be operated as`no customers initiated debit.
“That is until the account holders obtain and attach BVNs to the accounts. This means that a customer may not be allowed to withdraw money from his or her account until the BVN has been acquired and linked to the account.”
He pointed out that accounts of Nigeria residents without BVN's would, however, continue to receive cash and electronic credit inflows and would neither be deactivated nor confiscated. First announced in February last year, the BVN scheme was introduced by the CBN to provide greater security for access to sensitive or personal information in the banking system.
According to the CBN, with the increasing incidents of compromise on conventional security systems, biometric technologies have been increasingly used in the banking industry as an enhanced form of authentication for real-time security processes. Subsequently on February 14 last year, the CBN through the Banker’ Committee and in collaboration with all banks in Nigeria launched a centralised biometric identification system for the banking industry tagged BVN.
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