Ten additional companies have been licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to operate as International Money Transfer Operators (IMTO).
The apex bank disclosed this on Monday in a report, entitled ‘Updated list of International Money Transfer Operators in Nigeria as at April 01, 2021’.
In March, the CBN had listed only 47 IMTOs as licensed operators.
While some of the operators had their addresses in Nigeria, others operate from outside the country.
The CBN recently banned unauthorised international money transfer operators from such transactions, warning that it would apply severe sanctions against them if they remained adamant.
The financial regulator also came up with a new policy to force IMTOs and Money Deposit Banks to pay recipients of remittances in foreign currencies, rather than the naira.
It alleged that the IMTOs and banks were shortchanging remittances beneficiaries, as they gave them less naira equivalent of their foreign exchange sent to them by Nigerians in the Diaspora.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, recently said that weekly diaspora remittances rose from $5million to $30 million.
He noted that the initiatives introduced by the CBN to boost foreign exchange in the country were yielding results.
The apex bank also introduced a rebate of N5 for every $1 of fund remitted to Nigeria through IMTOs in its forex policy.
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