The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced that plans are underway to draft guidelines that would enable the regulation and supervision of FinTechs in Nigeria.
Speaking at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) held in Lagos, the Director, Banking and Payments System Department, CBN, Mr. Dipo Fatokun noted that the fintech would not take over the role of commercial banks in the country.
Fatokun, who is also the Chairman of NeFF, noted that the aim of the Forum is to tighten the engagement of all stakeholders to increase knowledge and information sharing and deepen the payment system capacity for success in the fight against electronic fraud.
In his words:
“Because of the importance of these FinTechs, CBN is drafting guidelines that would enable their regulation and supervision to be put in place.”
Deputy Governor, Operations, CBN, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, who was represented by the Director, Other Financial Institutions Department (OFID), Mrs. Tokunbo Martins noted that even though technology in the industry at its early stage, partnerships in the financial industry has improved.
In his words:
“Collaboration is much better than before. All the industry players have now realised that unless we work together, unless there is a consented effort together, there is really no way we are going to overcome this menace.”
Moves by the CBN so far
In recent times the Nigerian Financial ecosystem has witnessed a steady adoption of the e-payment channels through the emergence of fintechs.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), as well as all the other players in the financial sector, have been making efforts in ensuring that the financial sector moves in line with global trends in e-payment development with the view to ensuring efficiency in the system as well as customer satisfaction.
The apex bank in its bid to enhance information exchange and knowledge sharing on fraud issues amongst key stakeholders, with the objective of ensuring a collaborative and proactive approach to tackling/mitigating fraud and limiting occurrences and losses established the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF).
Recall that the CBN recently released a new regulatory framework for the use of unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) aimed at enhancing the security of electronic payments in the country. The new framework came into effect on the 1st of June, 2018. Part of the new regulation includes a limit to the number of an amount to 100,000 for a customer per day transactions and also the introduction of a 2nd level authentication by customers for all transactions above N20,000.
The forum draws its membership from the major stakeholders in the fintech space and commercial banks in the country.