The Central Bank of Nigeria has disclosed that 1.4 million agents generated N6 trillion in transactions, up from N48 billion in 2012.
This was stated by the Deputy Governor for Financial System Stability, of the CBN, Aisha Ahmed, who represented CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele at the National Assembly on Thursday.
She stated that there were 1.4 million agents, 14,000 ATMs, 900,000 POS terminals, 6,500 bank locations, and 6,500 POS terminals nationwide.
“Today, we have a very robust payment system that includes bank branches, branches of micro-finance banks, POS machines, ATM machines, agent banking, E-Naira, and many other options.
“To be specific, between the bank and the micro-finance banks, we have 6,500 locations, 900,000 POS terminals, 14,000 ATMs across the country, and 1.4 million agents nationwide and every single local government in Nigeria has agent represented.
“We also have a proliferation of electronic transactions. Just by way of a quick example, in 2012, we had N48 billion in POS transactions. Today, we have N6 trillion in POS transactions.
“Going to the cash withdrawal limit that was issued in response to the feedback from Nigerians in response to the comments made by this revered chamber, we took those feedbacks on board. CBN mentioned that we will be flexible in the implementation of this policy in response to the stakeholders’ sentiments.
“We have since reviewed the limit significantly from N100,000 that we had per week to N500,000 per week for individuals; from N500,000 per week for corporate to N5 million per week for corporate.
“We have also amended the processing from 5 and 10 percent downward to 3 and 5 percent. We have clarified the strategic importance of agents as important participants in the financial system because they play a key role in certain underserved segments in the rural areas and in certain market areas and they as well would be covered by this newly revised rule.” she added.
