Thisday||The Bankers’ Committee Tuesday resolved to extend the cashless policy to all states in the country from July 1, 2014.
Speaking to journalists at the end of a meeting by the committee in Lagos, the Head, Shared Services, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Chidi Umeano, said the decision was taken as a result of the success recorded in states where the policy had been implemented.
The cashless policy aims at reducing the dominance of cash in the system. It was initially introduced in Lagos in 2012 and thereafter, was extended to Ogun, Rivers, Anambra, Abia, Kano states as well as the Federal Capital Territory last July.
Throwing more light on the decision to extend the policy to other states, Umeano explained:
A decision was reached today that the cashless initiative would now be deployed nationwide. From the success we have recorded in those areas, we have now decided as an industry to move it to other states in the country.
In other words, by July 1, we are going live in all the states of the federation. As you well know, this is a critical part of the payment system modernisation and the success registered so far has been very impressive.
According to Umeano, statistics have shown that there been a significant improvement in electronic banking channels. He put the daily value of transactions on the Nigerian Electronic Fund Transfer at N123 billion and N50 million for Point of Sale (PoS).
