CBN places 572 BVNs under watch, promises to audit banks’ e-payment systems

He said: “In the last four years we have had a spike in transactions twice. First time was during COVID and January this year, during the currency redesign. Actually there are advantages and disadvantages to that spike in volume.

“During the COVID, we had Payment System Vision, PSV 2020, where we were trying to drive e-payment adoption across many sectors of the economy. COVID actually pushed the bar because our target for e-payment transactions was actually exceeded.

“The same thing happened this year. I can say we were actually not ready for the spike in volume we experienced during the naira redesign. That is one of the reasons why we decided internally that this year we should actually conduct an infrastructure audit based on the principle of Financial Market Infrastructure which is an international standard.

“We have done it before. It was part of the PSV 2020. We did it in 2018. So we know how to do it. We are not doing it as CBN. We are actually hiring a foreign consultant to do it to ensure there is no bias.

“The audit will give us an opportunity to benchmark our maturity level against international standards. That way we will be able to identify gaps in our infrastructure that we need to close if you really want to be there.”