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The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said Lagos and the six other states control about 90 per cent of cash transactions in the country.
The other States are Rivers, Anambra, Abia, Kano, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The CBN Deputy Governor, Operations, Mr. Tunde Lemo, disclosed this.
According to Lemo, this was one of the factors that necessitated the planned extension of the cashless policy to those States from July 1, this year.
He, however, pointed out that there were still some challenges with the cashless project, saying that most of them are being resolved. Lemo identified interconnectivity as one of the challenges.
Lemo said that besides the use of alternative channels of transactions such as Point of Sales (PoS), the cashless project would be driven through the telephone.
Lemo also said the cashless policy had been successful in Lagos, adding that the number of point of sale (PoS) terminals in the state has increased significantly from about 5,000 when the policy took off last year, to over 150,000.
“We still have a few challenges, but if I look back, I really would say that we have done a lot to transform the payment system in Lagos through PoS,” he said.
The cashless policy, whose implementation began in Lagos in January, last year, is aimed at reducing the dominance of cash in the system. The policy specifies penal charges for individuals and corporate organisations that want to withdraw or lodge cash above prescribed limits.
Under the policy, the CBN pegged the daily cumulative cash withdrawal or deposit limit for individual accounts at N500,000 per day and N3 million per day for corporate accounts.
The Chief Executive Officer, Electronic Payment Providers Association of Nigeria (E-PPAN), Mrs. Onajite Regha, had said the coming on board on the next phase of the cashless policy in July may raise the value of electronic funds transfer in the country to N160 billion per day by the end of the year. The E-PPAN boss had also said that the current value of electronic fund transfers – put at N80 billion per day by the CBN, would likely double because more people would be compelled to use e-Fund transfer channels.
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