Some of Nigeria’s financial technology firms will soon be granted permission to continue onboarding of new customers after the apex bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) put a lid on admitting new customers in April. They include OPay, Palmpay, Kuda Bank, and Moniepoint, among others.
Speaking on Tuesday in Abuja, at the 295th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting of the Apex Bank, the Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, said the apex bank has engaged many of the players on the need to strengthen their operations. The engagements have generated remedial measures that will help that sector to tighten up on onboarding and even existing clientele base to deter money laundering and illicit flows.
The ban on extending services to new customers, according to the CBN, was to set some regulatory measures in place to ensure the sanity of the financial sector, and guarantee that fintech firms are not used for financial improprieties.
Confirming this in a separate interview, Managing Director of PalmPay Nigeria, Mr. Chika Nwosu, noted that fintech firms have had several meetings with different stakeholders, including the CBN, NSA, EFCC, and within the Fintech ecosystem, all geared at birthing a stronger sector. “There are no issues. Everything happening is just to make Fintech in Nigeria to be better, and offer better services to the people.”
“Whatever that is happening with regulation is for the good of the Fintech space in Nigeria. Initially, when we started, there was an issue of trust. However, I can tell you now that the last one year, after the cashless policy, we have seen the trust start to grow,” he assured.
The recent assurance from the CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, means that mobile money operators that meet with rectifying the identified grey areas in their operations will be granted approval to resume onboarding of new customers.
“I am confident that as time goes on, and hopefully in another couple of months, all these will be something of the past and then you will see that sector going back into what they’ve been known to do before, but certainly with a very stronger regulatory framework,” he said.
He further gave reasons for the measures: “More recently, we had course to take a deep dive look at the whole issue of illicit flows and money laundering particularly within the non-heavy regulated banking system and we all know some of the issues that came out with cryptos and some of the messages we put out after that, which of course, gave us some course to know that there is the need for heightened surveillance.”
He said the apex bank has had major handshake with security agencies to identify the places to tighten regulations and surveillance in the sub-sector, and maintained that the CBN has not revoked the licence of any of the operators. “Let me re-emphasise that as at this point in time, we have not revoked the licenses of any of the fintech organisations.”
While debunking reports of victimization of mobile money operators, Cardoso reiterated: “The fintechs have not been singled out for any exceptional kind of treatment. However, regulation is very critical in a sector that seems to have grown so incredibly rapidly.” He rather extolled the impact fintech firms have on the economy, adding that the CBN remained proud of the exploits of fintech firms in the last number of year and the apex bank would continue to support and strengthen them.
At the meeting, the CBN Governor also announced an increase in Interest Rate from 24.75% to 26.25%.
