Customers Begs CBN To Extends BVN Deadline

Customers yesterday besieged various banking halls in Port Harcourt, Abuja and other cities for their biometric registration in order to get their unique Bank Verification Numbers less than 24 hours to the deadline for them to do so. When we visited banking halls in Port Harcourt, Banks visited are UBA in olu Obasanjor road, Access band, and First Bank were full of customers seeking to obtain their BVNs. About 14.6 million bank customers will be denied access to certain banking services beginning from Wednesday if the Central Bank of Nigeria goes ahead to end the registration exercise
today (Tuesday). As of last week, only 14 million bank customers had registered for the exercise. Going by the current statistics from the Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access, an organisation committed to deepening financial inclusion in Nigeria, only about 28.6 million adults in the country have bank accounts. However, the CBN said that it would not extend the June 30 deadline set for the completion of the registration of bank customers. As a result, he said effective Wednesday (tomorrow), banks would begin to deny some specific banking services to customers who lacked the BVN. Mu’azu said, “For now, the deadline will not be extended. We have given customers enough time to do the registration. For customers who fail to register before the deadline on June 30 (today), they will not be able to enjoy some banking services, including access to loans and Internet banking services until they are able to get registered. “The registration will continue but the penalty for failure to register within the stipulated time, which includes denying unregistered customers access to certain banking services, will commence on Wednesday.'' The CBN spokesperson reiterated that although unregistered customers would still have access to their bank accounts, they would be denied other services.
Punch