Today, Monday, January 9, the country will begin to implement the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy restricting daily cash withdrawals.
According to reports, under this arrangement, the maximum weekly limit for cash withdrawals by individuals and corporate organizations across all channels is N500,000 and N5,000,000, respectively. A processing fee of 3% or 5% will be charged to people or organizations who have a compelling need to withdraw more money than the permitted limits in order to conduct legal business.
Additionally, the financial institutions are required to collect the following data from clients and upload it to the CBN portal set up for that purpose: valid means of identification for the payee (driver’s license, passport, or national ID); The payee’s bank verification number; both the payer’s and the payee’s tax identification number; approval of the withdrawal in writing from the financial institution’s managing director or chief executive officer.
The CBN reportedly instructed deposit money banks to stop paying clients who made over-the-counter withdrawals of new naira notes.
To guarantee that the money circulates across the country prior to the deadline of January 31, 2023, when the old notes will no longer be accepted as legal tender, the Central Bank instead instructed the banks to load their Automated Teller Machines with exclusively new notes.
According to reports, the central bank gave the banks the instruction on Wednesday and commanded that implementation start right away.
The banks protested that there wasn’t enough of the new notes available, so they loaded their ATMs with the old ones as of Friday, failing to comply with the instruction.
