The Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy regarding daily cash withdrawal limits daily kicked off nationwide Monday, January 9.
This arrangement stipulates that maximum weekly limits for cash withdrawals across all channels by individuals and corporate organizations are N500,000 and N5 million, respectively. Individuals or organisations that have a necessity to withdraw above the approved limits for legitimate businesses would be required to pay a processing fee of three per cent and five per cent respectively.
The financial institutions are also expected to collect the following information from the customer, at the minimum, and upload same to the CBN portal created for such purpose: Valid means of identification of the payee (National ID, International Passport, or Driver’s License); Bank Verification Number of the payee; Tax Identification Number of both the payee and the payer; Approval in writing by the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the financial institution authorizing the withdrawal.
Also, banks were instructed by the Apex bank not to pay customers making over-the-counter withdrawals of new naira notes again.
Instead, the banks were required to load their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) with only new notes to make sure that the currency circulates across the nation ahead of the January 31, 2023 deadline when the old notes will no longer be legal tender.
CBN directed banks on Wednesday to commence execution of the policy immediately.
However, as at Friday, banks continued to load their cash machines with old naira notes as they complain about inadequate supply of new naira notes.
In a related development, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has reiterated that the deadline for exchange of the old Naira notes for new ones remains January 31, 2023.
In its official twitter handle @cenbank, on Friday, the apex bank wrote, “The current series of N200, N500 and N1, 000 notes remain legal tender until the deadline of January 31, 2023.”
This means that there is no official position yet by the CBN to shift its earlier deadline, and a pointer to a resolve to phase out the old naira notes of 200, 500, and 1,000 denominations over the next few days.
Last October, the CBN had announced that the old Naira notes would cease to circulate, and be legal tender from January 31, 2023 after detailing a number of reasons for the action.