Within certain thresholds, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has decided to continue suspending deposit processing fees. This is in line with a statement made on Wednesday in Abuja by Adetona Adedeji, acting director of the Banking Supervision Department.
According to Adedeji, the two percent and three percent fees that were formerly applied to cash deposits over N500,000 for individuals and N3 million for corporations have been suspended till September 30.
“As a result, until September 30th, all financial institutions under the supervision of the CBN should continue to accept all cash deposits from the public without any fees,” he stated. On December 11, 2023, Apex Bank first implemented the suspension of fees on cash deposits exceeding such criteria.
The extension follows significant criticism of the recently implemented cybersecurity fee of 0.5 per cent on electronic transactions recently announced by the CBN. The apex bank had announced that the implementation of the levy would start two weeks from May 6.
It said the levy shall be applied at the point of electronic transfer origination, then deducted and remitted by the financial institution. The deducted amount shall be reflected in the customer’s account with the narration, ‘Cybersecurity Levy,” it said.
However, some 16 banking transactions were exempted from the new cybersecurity levy. They 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 among others.
By the calculations of the new levy, N5 will be charged on a transaction of N1,000, while N50 will be charged on a transaction of N10,000. Others are an N500 charge on a transaction of N100,000, an N5,000 charge on a transaction of N1,000,000, and an N50,000 charge on a transaction of N10,000,000.
The cybersecurity levy will now be added to the already existing bank charges like transfer fees, stamp duty, charges on SMS, and VAT charged on a transaction of N1,000, while N50 will be charged on a transaction of N10,000.
Others are N500 charge on a transaction of N100,000, N5,000 charge on a transaction of N1,000,000, and N50,000 charge on a transaction of N10,000,000.
The cybersecurity levy will now be added to already existing bank charges like transfer fees, stamp duty, charges on SMS and VAT.
