CBN Says 37m Nigerians to Get BVN with Phone Number

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through the bankers committee has said it will introduce a reduced verification requirement of name and phone number to onboard the over 37 million excluded adult in the country.

Gowin Emefiele, CBN governor, disclosed this at the close of the 2019 bankers committee retreat in Ogere, Ogun state.

Emefiele said: “We now have about 40 million people on the BVN platform. We think that because of the benefits of the BVN to bank customers and the economy there is a need to consolidate and move BVN to a new level, something like 2.0.

“This entails for instance to reclassify and segregate transactions that could be done on BVN. We have two classifications. The existing BVN that we have in the system has about 18 lines of information. We decided that we classify into BVN premium and BVN lite.”

He further noted that if a customer is on BVN lite, there would be a limit to the kind of transactions the customer can do in terms of deposit and in terms of loans.

Emefiele said: “The KYC is part of what we are migrating into the BVN Lite. However, there are people who are currently financially excluded, like people in our rural communities that carry phones, but not having financial services. With the collaboration of NCC, we are putting this BVN arrangement to allow them conduct minimal financial services.”

The Governor said it should be possible to migrate these people into the BVN lite arrangement where they can conduct minimal financial services, not just banking services, but minimal financial services, “insurance and anything you want to conduct in terms of finance whether e-payment, or anything, you can do it with the aid of your phone.”

He said: “ Now as you bring them into the financial system, what it will do is that it will help to increase our rate of financial inclusion and reduce exclusion rate.