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CBN to Postpone Nationwide Deployment of Cashless Policy

By on July 30, 2012

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has concluded plans to postpone the nationwide deployment of its cashless policy which was originally scheduled to begin on January 1, 2013.

Instead the apex financial institution has decided to stagger its deployment, and only roll-out the policy in 5 additional states and the Federal Capital Territory at the beginning of next year.

The proposed states are Kano, Ogun, Anambra, Rivers, another Northeastern state and the FCT.

Chidi Umeano, Head of Shared Services, Central Bank of Nigeria, says the CBN adopted the staggered approach in order to manage the implementation process better.

He said, “The whole idea is that by January 2013, the cash-less initiative should go live all over the country, but for implementation purposes, we are phasing it. We are starting that with about five states and they are Kano, Ogun, Anambra, Rivers, a state in the North East and the Federal Capital Territory.”

CBN Deputy Governor of Operations, Tunde Lemo, disclosed last week that the CBN wanted to learn from the Lagos pilot phase before rolling the policy out nationwide.

He said, “We are looking at all options, I can assure you. What we want to do is to ensure we perfect everything that we do in Lagos before rolling out nationwide. I won’t make any policy statement on whether we will postpone the nationwide roll-out because a decision has not been taken; but if need be, why not. Lagos is miniature Nigeria, where we have cluster of high value transactions.

“We want to clear all the challenges in Lagos, so that when we roll out, we would have perfected the policy and then it will be very easy for the roll-out.”