How 37m Nigerians will get BVN with phone number — CBN

The 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 adults in the country.

The CBN Governor, Gowin Emefiele disclosed this at the close of the 2019 bankers’ committee retreat in Ogere, Ogun state at the weekend.

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 added: “The Know Your Costumer (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.”