The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, says it has deepened implementation of the Bank Verification Number, BVN policy.
According to its 2017 Annual Activity Report, which was made public on Wednesday, this was made possible by the release of the framework for BVN Operations and Watch-list for the banking sector.
In a foreword to the report, written by Adebayo Adelabu, Deputy Governor, Operations, the bank said the effort was aimed at addressing incidents of fraud and other unethical practices, to engender public confidence in the financial system.
It explained that the Watch-list is a database of bank customers involved in confirmed fraudulent activities in the financial services industry.
Also, “the Treasury Single Account, TSA, payments gateway was modified with the introduction of the Aggregator model, to accommodate other key service providers for efficient service delivery and engender competition,” the report indicated.
Similarly, the CBN, in collaboration with its stakeholders commenced the process of ascertaining appropriate pricing for the TSA structure for both payments and e-collection segments.
According to the Deputy Governor, there had been tremendous adoption and usage of electronic payments channels by the banking public. The Electronic Payments Incentive Scheme (EPIS) was sustained during the year with the conduct of Electronic Payments Efficiency Award in February, 2017.
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He also explained that the performances of stakeholders as well as users of e-payment channels were evaluated based on set parameters for various categories, adding that the activities of Payment System Vision 2020, PSV2020 project sustained momentum with the successful transmission of the Smart City Policy Framework to the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA for implementation.
In the agricultural sector, the report said the Agriculture Initiative Working Group partnered with the Lagos State government for the financial inclusion of various categories of farmers in the agriculture value chain.