CBN cuts down charges on electronic transactions as it lists the 12 correct electronic bank fees

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The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced a cut down of fees on electronic banking operations on Thursday, 27 January 2022 in its published guidelines to banks and other financial institutions in the country.

The guideline was signed by Chibuzor Efobi, on behalf of the Director, Financial Policy and Regulation Department of CBN.

The guideline has a review of other bank charges to align with market developments and was initially published in 2004 and revised in 2013, 2017, and 2020 subsequently.

The CBN guidelines also comprised sections designed to directly address instances of excess unapproved (arbitrary) fees.

Reports indicate that the CBN has the mandate to issue the guide to bank charges.

Here are some of the major electronic charges

1. The fee for hardware tokens will be based on cost recovery, with a maximum charge of N2,500, as opposed to the previous maximum charge of N3,500.

2. ATM fees are decreased from N65 to N35 following the third withdrawal within a month.

3. The annual cost for foreign currency (FCY) denominated cards has been cut from $20 to $10.

4. The fee for SMS obligatory alerts will be based on cost-recovery from the previous maximum price of N4.

5. As a result, transactions below N5,000 would incur a maximum fee of N10, transfers between N5001 and N50,000 will incur a charge of N25, and transfers above N50,000 will incur a charge of N50

6. A pricing scale for electronic transfers to replace the present N50 flat cost.

7. Bill payments made through e-channels will incur a maximum fee of N500 based on 0.75 percent of the transaction amount up to a maximum of N1,200.

Meanwhile, total customer deposits in nine Nigerian banks climbed to N30.81 trillion at the end of the first quarter of this year, up from N29.73 trillion in December 2020.

United Bank for Africa Plc was the highest bank in terms of customer deposits as of March 31, 2021, with deposits growing to N5.79 trillion from N5.68 trillion in December.

Others were revealed in the report which used public information from the banks’ audited accounts published on the Nigerian exchange website.