Deposit Money Banks are not supposed to reimburse consumers who withdraw fresh naira notes over the counter, according to a directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
To guarantee that the money circulates across the country before to the deadline of January 31, 2023, when the old notes would no longer be accepted as legal tender, the central bank instead instructed the banks to fill their Automated Teller Machines with exclusively new notes. On Wednesday, the central bank issued the direction to the banks and commanded that implementation start right once.
The banks protested that there wasn’t enough of the new notes available, so they loaded their ATMs with the old ones as of Friday, failing to comply with the instruction.
According to the CBN decision from Thursday, her lender sent a note to all the branch managers on Thursday to implement the CBN order.
The memo, which was titled., ‘Urgent update on currency redesign’ and signed by the Group Head, Retail Operation, stated, “The CBN has mandated that we immediately stop the Over-the-Counter payment of the new N200, N500 & N,1000 currency. Instead, all new notes should be loaded into the ATMs for customer withdrawals.
“This is effective immediately please.”
The banks have opted to load a combination of the old and new N1,000 and N500 notes in the ATMs for clients to withdraw after complaints that the new notes were in poor supply.
A source stated, “We got a memo from the head office this morning (Thursday) that we should stop dispensing new notes to customers who come to withdraw over the counter, but instead we should load the ATMs with the new notes. The correspondence from the head office said the directive was from the CBN and that we should implement it immediately.
“The directive has, however, thrown us into a dilemma as we are in short supply of the new notes and we can’t afford not to load the ATMs as there has been a surge in the number of customers coming to withdraw after the Yuletide holidays.
