CBN Urges Support for Cashless Project

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has called for concerted effort by stakeholders to ensure the success of the cashless monetary policy arguing that the policy would  lead to the attainment of the goal of the country being one of the 20 leading global economies by 2020, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.

Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor of the apex bank, stated that moving from a cash base to cashless economy would facilitate the exchange of goods and services among economic agents at lower costs as well as help to integrate markets within and across geographical regions.

The CBN governor told stakeholders at a two-day seminar in Abuja to discuss strategies best suited for government ministries, directorates and agencies (MDAs), on implementation of the cashless policy drive.

The programme was structured for knowledge building and skills development, designed to feature special workshop sessions facilitated by industry experts from various commercial Banks and e-payment service providers.

In pursuit of its efforts at ensuring the efficiency of the payments system in the country, the Mallam Sanusi said the CBN had put in place some guidelines to achieve such objectives.

They include: guidelines on point of service (POS); regulatory framework for mobile payments; cheque truncation; ATM fraud prevention; Migration to electronic magnetic valve cards, EMV (European MasterCard and Visa) to reduce fraud; maximum cap on cheques and establishment of policy and oversight office.

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that about 65 per cent of cash in circulation in Nigeria was outside the banking system and is severely limiting the impact of the CBN’s fiscal economic stabilization policy.

However, Charles Ifedi, director of payment solutions and VAS at Interswitch, said laudable as the cashless policy sounds, it would crash like other policies introduced by government without proper evaluation of previous errors.

He stated that “several failed attempts at entrenching e-government initiatives like the National ID card project have created some form of apathy and mistrust on any project from government.”

Ifedi noted that there were: “Several closed systems with different cards for different purposes like the Voters Card, National ID card, State ID cards, Health Card among others, which are not adding any tangible value to the citizens” adding that until these schemes were harmonized or done away with, government might not be taken seriously on any e-government issue.

He lamented the “insufficient and low presence of e-Payment channels at various service points such as hospitals and the transportation industry.”

To ensure full compliance and success of the policy, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek learnt, the CBN was liaising with other government agencies; and has got commitment of the Office of the Accountant General (OAGF) towards implementing a Treasury Single Account as part of the economic reform programme (ERP).

It would also include the implementation of an enterprise financial management system (EFMS) to be integrated with a robust e-Payment system, making it an important opportunity for a synergy among major institutions in the financial sector.

The effective of the adoption of e-payment system includes an easy tracking of payments to beneficiaries’ accounts, which will in turn assist Audit Trail. The system when adopted would also reduce cases of corruption and assist agencies like EFCC and ICPC in tackling corruption. It would also increase efficiency of operation in the economy; reduce transaction costs and increase convenience of payments and enhance economic growth.