The Punch Newspaper reports;
The Central Bank of Nigeria and the Bankers Committee on Tuesday sealed a biometric solution pact with a German Firm, Dermalog, for the development of a payment system that would be driven by fingerprints. The move, according to the Governor, CBN, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, will help to revolutionise the country’s payment system.
For instance, unlike the current practice where different instruments are used as means of identification, bank customers will from 2014 be identified through their fingerprints. Sanusi, while speaking at the signing of the agreement, which was held at the central bank’s headquarters in Abuja, noted that the system would become operational on February 14, 2014.
According to Sanusi;
We have about a thousand microfinance banks; we have customers of pension fund administrators; we have customers of insurance companies; we have people who deal with the stock market, and the vision for this is that everyone that deals with the financial system should have his biometric data captured, and this will be used for identification, verification and authentication.”
For a long time, we have been waiting for the national identity card system and progress is being made, and I will like to use this opportunity to let everybody understand that the banking industry project is not in any way incompatible with the national identity process.
