Nigeria's banking regulator orders banks to impose a 0.5% cybersecurity levy on major transactions
Nigerians will now pay a 0.5% cybersecurity levy for every major transaction they make starting in two weeks.
Nigerians now have to deal with more money leaving their accounts, as the country's central bank has just ordered all banks in the country to impose a 0.5% cybersecurity levy on all major transactions.
This comes after the Apex Bank released a circular on Monday, confirming that the levy would take effect two weeks from Monday, May 6, and will be imposed by all banks, including commercial, merchant, non-interest, and payment service banks.
Henry Chikwem
However, some exceptions have been made against the levy. These exceptions include loan disbursements and repayments, salary payments, intra-account transfers within the same bank or between different banks for the same customer, and intra-bank transfers between customers of the same bank.
Yusuf Balogun
Also exempted from the levy were interbank transfers, cheque clearing and settlements, letters of credit, recapitalization-related funding, savings and deposits, and transactions involving long-term investments.
The Nigerian government has backed this new development by stating that they plan to sanitize the financial sector, which is why directives like this and others in the past, such as the deduction of a 0.375% stamp duty charge on all mortgaged-backed loans and bonds by deposit money banks, have been enforced.
With these recent developments, one might conclude that the Nigerian government's decisions are poorly timed considering the current harsh realities of the economy and the major impact such choices would have on the income of the average citizen in the country.
As of 2023, the World Bank estimated the poverty rate in the country to have reached 38.9%, with an estimated 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line — the world's second-largest poor population after India.
