According to data issued by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), enrollment in the Biometric Verification Number (BVN) by bank clients in the country reached 54.77 million as of last month.
According to the NIBSS statistics, 700,000 bank clients joined the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) program to address identification difficulties in the banking industry over three months between April 10, 2022, and July 10, 2022.
Enrollments amounted to 51.7 million as of December 26, 2021, with the BVN enrollment database growing by six million in 2021.
According to NIBSS data, the country had 133.5 million active bank accounts as of December 2021. It indicates that 78.73 bank clients have not registered their BVN with any of the country’s 22 banks. While many accounts may be linked to a single BVN, industry observers say there is still a gap that must be addressed between bank accounts and BVN registrations.
According to the NIBSS, BVN provides bank account owners with a unique identity that can be confirmed across the Nigerian banking system, while also protecting clients’ bank accounts from unauthorized access.
Emphasising the need for the number, NIBSS noted that with the increasing incidents of compromise on conventional security systems (password and PIN), there was a high demand for greater security for access to sensitive or personal information in the Banking System.
“In recent times, biometric technologies have been used to analyse human characteristics as an enhanced form of authentication for real-time security processes, ”he said.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in collaboration with the Bankers’ Committee, NIBSS, launched the BVN project on February 14, 2014, intending to capture the biometrics of all bank customers and give them a unique identity that can be verified across the Nigerian banking industry.
The project is also aimed at deepening financial inclusion in the country. To have many more Nigerians on the BVN database, CBN in December 2019 announced the commencement of the classification BVN 2.0 plan that allows both the rich and poor in rural areas to access financial services.
