Nigerians have received an apology from Mr. Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), for the surge in failed electronic banking transactions.
With the CBN’s implementation of the Naira redesign programme, Nigerians have experienced difficulties when making electronic payments.
On Tuesday, March 22, at the conclusion of the two-day meeting of the monetary policy committee in Abuja, the head of the CBN addressed this.
Emefiele said: “I must apologize. Yes, online channels fail. But no doubt it is as a result of the deluge of online transactions that hit the banking industry. But it is being resolved.
“On a daily basis, our payments system management department monitor the online payment platforms so as to make sure that when there is a downtime, they are quickly resolved so that transactions can go on smoothly.”
He also applauded fintechs for easing the burden on traditional banks and enabling easy transactions for Nigerians.
On the availability of money, Emefiele claimed that the naira redesign policy’s implementation had reduced the amount of cash outside of banks.
He said: “At the beginning of the naira redesign policy we said that there was about N3.23 trillion in circulation out of which only N500 billion was held in the banking system, while N2.73 trillion was outside the banks.
“It was published yesterday that currency in circulation is close to N1 trillion. CBN will continue to pump the newly redesigned currency into the market.
“The truth is that at some point we will need to reassess to know whether the currency in circulation has attained an optimal level so as to put in place measures to ensure that we don’t go to the level where we were when people kept money outside the banking system for their own benefits.”
