Active PoS systems hit 70,000 in 5 years – CBN

Active Point of Sale (PoS) systems in the country have grown from less than 5,000 to over 70,000 between 2010 and 2015, recent data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed.

Also, mobile money operations currently have over 10million mobile money subscribers, and over 10 e-commerce businesses have commenced operations in the country, while recording significant improvement in the nation’s Instant Payments system since its implementation for online, real-time and retail account-to-account transfers.

Apex bank statistics also showed that total number of individual customers in the banking industry has grown to 59.9 million as at August 23, 2016, while the number of Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) linked to customers’ accounts stood at 36.7 million.

But it was notes that the above disclosure implies that 10 months after deadline for BVN registration, a total number of 23.2 million out of 59.9 million accounts belonging to individual customers in the banks are yet to be linked to the BVN.

However,in a paper delivered at the just concluded 2016 Annual Banking and Finance Conference, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said that changes in the Nigerian payment system were not just limited to growth in electronic payments transactions, but also improved financial and economic inclusion, as more people now have access to payments services.

“We must also acknowledge the effect of these innovations on our goal of assisting to attain full employment, in view of the several thousands of jobs created down the value chain. Such jobs include those working as network agents, logistics officers, technicians, programmers, system developers, among many others”, he said.

Commenting on the efforts of the bank in combating fraud in the banking system, Emefiele noted that the Nigeria electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) was established in 2011, to serve as an industry focal point for sharing information and collaboration in the fight against fraud.

He said: “There was issuance of various regulations to combat fraud, in addition to the enactment of the Cybercrime (Prevention, Prohibition etc.) Act. Some of these regulations include directives on minimum control features for instant payments systems, transactions limits and two-factor authentication for internal banking processes.

Furthermore, measures were mandated for protecting the Nigerian payments system space from weaknesses in other climes, through the directives on usage of Nigerian issued card present fraud in non-EMV compliant environments.

In a similarly direction, CBN Director, Banking and Payment Systems Department, ‘DipoFatokun, said the apex bank is working out regulatory framework that would enable it to either blacklist fraudulent bank customers, or at least, place them on watch-list across the banking industry.

However, data from the CBN showed that e-fraud rate in terms of value dropped by 63 percent last year, after the BVN introduction and improved collaboration among banks via the fraud desks, the total fraud volume rose significantly by 683 percent within the year compared to 2014 figures.

Also, the country experienced a total of 3,500 cyber-attacks with 70 percent success rate and loss of $450 million within the last one year mainly through cross channel fraud, data theft, email spooling, phishing, shoulder surfing and underground websites.

He pointed out that BVN has now made it easier for the CBN and banks to uniquely identify every customer or to be able to trace transactions when frauds are committed, adding that no bank customer, including Nigerian bank customers in Diaspora, is authorised to have more than one BVN.

“I want to assure you that the BVN has assisted us a lot in the banking system. It has assisted us to check frauds, and we are working on a framework, that will enable us if not to blacklist customers, because of some legal implications, but at least to watch-list a customer that is identified to have been fraudulent, or have done what he is not supposed to do across the banking sector,” he said.

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