The Central Bank of Nigeria has instructed Deposit Money Banks to stop paying clients who make over-the-counter withdrawals of fresh naira notes.
In order to ensure that the money circulates across the country prior to the deadline of January 31, 2023, when the old notes will no longer be accepted as legal tender, the central bank instead instructed the banks to fill their Automated Teller Machines with solely new notes.
On Wednesday, the central bank reiterated its instruction to the banks, ordering that the implementation process start right away.
The banks, however, complained that there wasn’t enough of the new notes available, so they loaded their ATMs with the old notes as of Friday. As a result, they were unable to comply with the directive.
The message, which was titled “Urgent update on currency redesign” and was signed by the Group Head, Retail Operation, read as follows: “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.”
According to a bank official, “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.
“Loading of ATMs is the responsibility of the banks. When our bank tested the ATMs, only one denomination of the new notes passed the test of dispensing seamlessly through our machines. The bank is working on reconfiguring the ATMs to be able to dispense the new notes. What we have done in my branch is to mix the few new N1,000 and N500 notes available with old ones so that desperate customers can make withdrawals and meet their immediate needs.
“If you observed, a lot of ATMs were inactive during the Christmas and New Year holidays. The idea was not to give out old notes, but unfortunately, the new ones are not in circulation. The banks have a mandate to evacuate N1bn old notes each to the CBN on a daily basis and our head office has set a strict vault limit or cash holding limit for each branch, which on no condition we must exceed.”
