Reps to CBN: Introduce stringent regulation for POS operators

The House of Representatives has called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to, in the public interest, introduce stringent regulations and guidelines including sanctions on the Point of Sale (POS) business operations nationwide.

This followed the adoption of a motion moved by Jimoh Abdulraheem Olajide at plenary Thursday.

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Presenting the motion, Olahide said POS had offered banks customers as well as unbanked Nigerians to make payments for products or services rendered.

He added that it had also been turned into a lucrative business in Nigeria and has provided jobs for millions of unemployed people who see it as a good alternative to white-collar jobs in the country.

He however noted that while many Nigerians are making legal money from the lucrative business, some are using it for fraudulent acts to create fake credit alerts to defraud innocent customers.

This, he said, calls for the need for government intervention to rescue the rising business sector in the country.

The lawmaker added that POS merchants in Nigeria were not only licensed by commercial banks, other private companies were currently in the business of giving out POS for business purposes thus making the business to be more porous and ambiguous.

He said: “Presently, no financial regulatory bodies in Nigeria can precisely ascertain the total number of Point of Sale (POS) machines and their operators in the country.

According to him, some of the POS operators also fraudulently charge exorbitant amounts of money from their customers’ bank accounts, while some retained vital information from customers’ ATM cards in the course of making financial transactions.

The House mandated its Committee on Banking and Currency to organize stakeholders’ meeting for the purpose of tackling the menace of the operation of the Point of Sale (POS) system in Nigeria.