37 million Nigerians to get BVN with phone number — CBN.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through the
bankers committee has said it will introduce a
reduced verification requirement of name and
phone number to onboard the over 37 million
excluded adult in the country.
The CBN Governor, Gowin Emefiele disclosed
this at the close of the 2019 bankers
committee retreat in Ogere, Ogun state.
Emefiele said: “We now have about 40 million
people on the BVN platform. We think that
because of the benefits of the BVN to bank
customers and the economy there is a need to
consolidate and move BVN to a new level,
something like 2.0.
“This entails for instance to reclassify and
segregate transactions that could be done on
BVN. We have two classifications. The existing
BVN that we have in the system has about 18
lines of information.We decided that we
classify into BVN premium and BVN lite.”
He further noted that if a customer is on BVN
lite, there would be a limit to the kind of
transactions the customer can do in terms of
deposit and in terms of loans.
Emefiele said: “The KYC is part of what we are
migrating into the BVN Lite. However, there are
people who are currently financially excluded,
like people in our rural communities that carry
phones, but not having financial services. With
the collaboration of NCC, we are putting this
BVN arrangement to allow them conduct
minimal financial services.”
The Governor said it should be possible to
migrate these people into the BVN lite
arrangement where they can conduct minimal
financial services, not just banking services,
but minimal financial services, “insurance and
anything you want to conduct in terms of
finance whether e-payment, or anything, you
can do it with the aid of your phone.”
He said: “ Now as you bring them into the
financial system, what it will do is that it will
help to increase our rate of financial inclusion
and reduce exclusion rate.