While he met with several FinTech investors and ecosystem participants on Friday, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo voiced concern about the challenges Nigerians were encountering when trying to exchange their old notes for the redesigned Naira notes.
This information was revealed in a statement provided to journalists by Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity, Office of the Vice President, in which Akande claimed Osinabjo urged regulators and banks to send more FinTechs and money agents to the hinterlands to address the worrying situation.
In order to solve the troubling scenario, Osinabjo advised regulators and banks to send more FinTechs and money agents to the hinterlands.
The Vice President stated that in order to reach the most remote areas of the nation, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the commercial banks should collaborate with all FinTechs that have mobile money agents, not just some of them.
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He claims that “You need cash to pay for transport. For instance, in Abuja how do you take ‘drop or along’ or use a Keke NAPEP without cash, or buy foodstuff on the road or in canteens, or even buying recharge cards?
“Parents wit: h kids in public schools give money daily to their children for lunch, most commerce is informal, so you need cash for most things,” According to Prof. Osinbajo ”
“it seems to me that banks must engage their mobile money operators – FinTechs with mobile money licenses and many of them have micro-finance bank licenses now and already have a network of mobile money agents or human banks or human ATMs (as they are sometimes called) who are responsible to them and they can supervise by themselves. They can do currency swaps and open bank accounts.”
“More disturbing is the fact that after depositing your old notes, there are no new notes, so people everywhere in the urban areas and rural areas simply have no money.”
Especially from the perspective of the typical Nigerian and those in the countryside who barely utilise any electronic platforms, the Vice President noted that “there are logistical issues that have to be handled by the CBN and the banks.”
In addition, he said that while there has always been some failure rate in online banking and financial transactions, these have grown more challenging as a result of the system’s increased load.
He stated: “so where in the past you used POS or any of the electronic platforms, you had maybe 20%-30% failure rate, now because everyone is trying to get on those platforms, obviously, the failure rate is much more and the problems are much more pronounced.”
