Malam sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Central Bank Governor, has attributed the challenges witnessed with electronic transfer on cash less policy to low bandwidth by the telecom operators.
Sanusi said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday on the sideline of the Spring Meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC.
?“ Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) has an instant transfer, so people just go into electronic transfers, so we are having more and more electronic transfers, now we have a number of dependencies.
?“With the telecom companies, they got the cell stations sited in many places but they have to increase their bandwidth so that they can take data.
?“So sometimes we have a lot of data failure because of bandwidth, not because of anything and we are talking to telecom companies.
?“What we have done now is to say let’s get NIBSS and let's look at the clustering of the point of Sales (POS).’’
According to him, the bank will ensure that the telecom companies increased bandwidths where there are many POS.
He added that bank was working to ensure that various networks work together to reduce cost for customers.
“One of the problems is that sometimes, you can be in an area where there is only MTN that has a cell site and not GLO and if you try to use a Sim card that will switch, the cost will be huge, it’s like the roaming charge.
“Because it’s like you are trying to pay different network, so we are trying solutions that will not be to expensive on the customers. ’’
The CBN Governor noted that since the introduction of the policy, many organisations had changed their way of doing business while some had introduced e-payment of staff salaries.
Sanusi commended the level of commitment and support of Nigeria to the policy and assured that the apex bank would continue to ensure the effective operation of the policy.
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The apex bank kicks start the operation of the cash less policy on Jan.1 2012 as a pilot scheme in Lagos. (NAN)