Latest figures released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) have revealed that there are over 122 million bank accounts in Nigeria as at June 2019.
This is a sharp increase from the figures recorded as at December 2018, which put the total number of bank accounts at 118.1 million.
However, there is a stack difference between the number of account holders and the active accounts in Nigeria. According to the NIBSS data, out of the 122.4 million bank accounts in the country, only 72.9 million accounts were active as at the end of last month.
It was gathered that 2019 has seen a fluctuation in the active use of bank accounts by customers since the year began.
For example, January recorded the lowest number in the year so far with only 71.8 million active bank accounts.
The month of February, by contrast, saw a surge in activity in over 73 million bank accounts, while over 74 million bank accounts were active in March, making it the month with the highest number of active bank accounts in the year so far.
However, the next two months saw drastic fall compared to March in the activities of bank users as April recorded 72.977 million active bank accounts with a slight gain over May, which saw a little drop by over 40,000 users to 72.936 million.
The NIBSS data further indicated that the month of June had a comparative advantage to May 2019 by over just 38,000, with a total active bank account of 72.974 million recorded across the country.
So far, there are a total of 29.3 million Current Accounts domiciled with Nigerian banks in contrast to the 89.8 million Savings Accounts.
According to a recent data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), there are 22 deposit money banks authorised to operate in the country as at June 30, 2019.
However, there are eight banks given the approval to operate outside the shores of the country, 11 commercial banks have licences to offer financial services across the federation, while two have regional banking licence, with one having non-interest licence across the nation.
