The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele has said that about N1 trillion is currently in circulation and more redesigned naira notes will be made available to the citizens.
This is as he apologised for the increase in failed digital bank transactions, promising that the online payment system hitches will be resolved soon.
The CBN governor spoke on Tuesday at the close of the two-day monetary policy committee meeting held in Abuja.
Investors King reports that Nigerians have been faced with cash scarcity since January, 2023 and recently, rise in failed electronic bank transactions done through bank mobile apps, debit cards and USSD channels making payment more difficult.
Emefiele assured that the CBN payments system management department are working on it to ensure that the situation is improved and electronic banking channels are resolved on time.
He commended the fintechs for complementing payment channels to reduce the workload on traditional banks in Nigeria.
His words, “I must apologise. Yes, online channels fail. But no doubt it is as a result of the deluge of online transactions that hit the banking industry. But it is being resolved,” Emefiele said.
“On a daily basis, our payments system management department monitors the online payment platforms so as to make sure that when there is a downtime, they are quickly resolved so that transactions can go on smoothly.”
According to the CBN Boss, the apex bank is working to ensure that more redesigned notes are circulated but are not kept outside the bank as the redesign policy aims to checkmate storing money in other places.
He gave the details of the redesigned naira notes pumped into circulation at the beginning of the policy as N3.23 trillion, of which only N500 billion was kept in bank accounts while N2.73 trillion was stored outside the banks.
“It was published yesterday that currency in circulation is close to N1 trillion. CBN will continue to pump the newly redesigned currency into the market.
“The truth is that at some point we will need to reassess to know whether the currency in circulation has attained an optimal level so as to put in place measures to ensure that we don’t go to the level where we were when people kept money outside the banking system for their own benefits,” he added.
