By Alex C
Deposit money banks in Nigeria are to commence roll-out of the Bank Verification Number (BVN) registration of its customers next week. This signifies end of the pilot phase of the project following which over 7,000 BVN were issued by 21 deposit money banks and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System plc (NIBSS) to existing internal bank customers.
As the roll-out begins, bank customers are expected to follow some listed processes for enrolment. These include walking into branches of their bank, filling and submitting the BVN enrolment form, presenting oneself for data capturing (such as fingerprint, facial image, etc).
At the end of the exercise, an acknowledgment slip with the transaction ID is issued to the customer within 24 hours following which the system confirms the application and the BVN generated. A Short Message Service (SMS) is later sent to the customer for pickup at the branch he/she registered.
Commencing in Lagos State, the roll-out of the BVN solution for the identification and verification of bank customers in June precedes a nationwide roll-out. This is in alignment with the phased approach adopted in executing the three-tiered KYC – Know Your Customer and Cashless Policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
It would be recalled that on February 14, 2014, former CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, heralded the pilot phase of the BVN project deployment which was scheduled to run to May 31, 2014, after which full rollout to bank branches was to commence.