The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has raised the alarm that only 57.4 million out of over 200 million Nigerians, have Bank Verification Number (BVN).
The BVN was introduced to uniquely identify bank customers in Nigeria, lower fraud, and boost the effectiveness of the nation’s financial operations.
Since its launch, the BVN has developed into a crucial prerequisite for opening and maintaining bank accounts in the nation.
This was said Tuesday in Calabar, Cross River State, at a seminar by CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele.
Emefiele, who was represented by Dr. Hassan Mahmoud, Director of the CBN’s Monetary Policy Department, 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.”
As part of attempts to remove the constraint associated with inadequate identification of banking customers, the CBN chairman stated that BVN has continued to feature in the bank’s Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.
The CBN, he said, will “continue to support the aggressive enrollment of prospective banking customers in the informal sector onto the BVN system.”
Emefiele added that the Payments System Vision (PSV) 2025 was introduced “to expand payment options available to customers and strengthen regulation of the payments system.”
More specifically, the CBN governor stated that the nation’s top bank uses the payments system as a tool to further the nation’s financial inclusion objectives.
