Nigeria recorded 6.5 million additional accounts in the first three months of the year.
According to data from the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), the total number of bank accounts (assets and dormant) increased to 108.3 million. “The increase in the number of active bank accounts represents a huge leap forward as, over the course of 2017, the banks, rather than adding, have lost a total of 1.5 million active accounts” .
“The number of active bank accounts, which was 65 million in December 2016, had dropped to 63.5 by the end of 2017. The number of active banking customers (individuals) also went from 59 million in December 2017 to 65 million in March, to six million individual customers opened accounts within three months. ”
It should be noted that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) seeks to achieve financial inclusion of 80% by 2018 and has launched several initiatives, including a national cashless policy to achieve this goal. Thus, to remedy the lack of a unique identifier in the Nigerian banking sector and to facilitate the creation of an inclusive financial services environment, the CBN, in collaboration with the Bankers Committee, launched the BVN project on 14 February 2014, with biometrics solution, as a unique identifier for all customers of the bank.
