About 9.92 million bank accounts have been linked to the Bank Verification Number (BVN) in the past two years.
This brings the total number of bank accounts with BVN to 46.72 million as of February 28, 2021 from 36.8 million in February 17, 2019, according to Nigerian Interbank Settlement Scheme (NIBSS) records obtained by BizWatch Nigeria on Wednesday.
BVN is a unique number for customers of banks in Nigeria which contains the biometric details of customers, including the fingerprint of all ten fingers and facial image.
The Central Bank of Nigeria through the Banker’ Committee and in collaboration with all banks in Nigeria launched a centralised biometric identification system for the banking industry in 2014.
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The biometric identification was introduced to address identity theft, reduce exposure to fraud and enhance the banking industry chances of being able to fish out blacklisted customers, among others.
It was gathered that there was a slowdown in BVN registration between February and May last year due to the restrictions during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic.
However, it was observed that there was a significant increase in enrolment between August and October due to several government intervention schemes aimed at empowering the people, for which BVN registration is required.
However, at a press conference, in August 2018, top banking industry officials had announced that in line with plans for the implementation of the Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF) initiative, the CBN, DMBs and their partners planned to increase total BVN enrolment from about 33 million, at the time, to 70 million by 2020.
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