The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has disclosed that only 57.4 million Nigerians have Bank Verification Number (BVN).
The apex bank, in collaboration with Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), bankers committee and all Nigerian deposit money banks, launched the BVN project in February 2014.
The BVN was introduced to uniquely identify customers of Nigerian banks, reduce fraud and improve the efficiency of banking operations in the country.
Since its introduction, the BVN has become an important requirement for opening and maintaining bank accounts in Nigeria.
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, made this disclosure, in Calabar, Cross River State, at the 34th seminar for Finance Correspondents and Business Editors.
Emefiele who was represented by the Director Monetary Policy Department of the CBN, Dr Hassan Mahmoud, said: “With a total enrollment of 57,431,355 as at 31st March 2023, the BVN is supporting the development of credit profiles for banking customers, which will assist in improving access to credit for credit-worthy borrowers by banks”.
Emefiele stated that BVN has continued to feature in the bank’s Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements as part of plans to ease the constraint associated with poor identification of banking customers”.
The CBN, he said, will “continued to support the aggressive enrollment of prospective banking customers in the informal sector onto the BVN system”.
Emefiele added that the Payments System Vision (PSV) 2025 was introduced “to expand payment options available to customers and strengthen regulation of the payments system”.
Speaking more about payment system, the CBN governor noted the apex bank uses “payments system as a tool to achieve the financial inclusion goals of the country”.