As the currency redesign policy continues to generate confusion across the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria has vowed to clamp down on point-of-sale owners who have turned themselves into payment agents, to take advantage of members of the public.
The apex bank described such unaccredited payment agents as fifth columnists whose activities constituted economic sabotage, saying that it would carry out sting operations around the country this week to arrest and prosecute them. “Further reviews have indicated that it does appear as if there are fifth columnists operating in this system, and these fifth columnists, it appears, are anyone with PoS access,” Omayuku said. Several of them have now resorted to the unfortunate practice of acting as payment agents. So you find out that even next to petrol stations, their agents or PoS operators next to them are there whom you will go to, to sell money to you, and you take that money to go and buy petrol; and not just petrol stations, in short, everywhere. From this week on, there will be very sting operations around the country. Because this (selling of naira) is the incentive. The incentive is that they can sell our currency to us,
He said the CBN also frowned on the exorbitant commissions on transactions that payment agents collect from customers as against the approved charges, describing their activities as fraudulent. Omayuku further said, “The operational arrangement for payment agents is that they take a commission for transactions and this commission is not more than N100 or N200 for transactions of up to N10,000. But we have heard of cases where people are being charged N1,000 or N2,000. This is certainly fraudulent; this is a rogue operation.
“The management of the CBN and the leaders of the country do not subscribe to any logic that will allow people to operate like this. So, the security agencies will be very active this week, going forward.” He warned those engaged in illegal practices to turn a new leaf and advised members of the public to report perpetrators The CBN official also debunked claims that the existing online platforms were not effective to support a large volume of economic activities, stressing that the challenges associated with the online system “are not as bad as to warrant rejection of transfer payments.”
