CBN grants MTN, Airtel, others license to sell dollar to Nigerians

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has published guidelines for the supervision of Payment Service Banks (PSBs).

The framework allowed the PSB operators to sell foreign currency, particularly dollars, to authorized foreign exchange dealers, among other things.

The CBN approved MoMo Agent by MTN, SmartCash by Airtel, and MoneyMaster by Glo as PSB for financial transactions.

The aforementioned PSBs can accept deposits from individuals and small businesses, which will be covered by the deposit insurance scheme.

They will also make payments and remittances (including inbound cross-border personal remittances) through various channels within Nigeria.

READ ALSO: MTN leads as Nigeria’s active telecom voice subscribers hit over 200m

The apex bank also authorized the PSBs to sell foreign currencies (forex) realized from inbound cross-border personal (remittances) to licensed foreign exchange dealers with a N5 billion minimum capital.

The guideline read: “PSBs shall have the privilege to make their investments from the CBN window. All funds in excess of the PSB’s operational float should be placed with DMBs.

“PSBs shall participate in the payment and settlement system and have access to the inter-bank and the CBN collateralized repo window for their temporary liquidity management.”

“PSBs shall render quarterly returns indicating the number of financially excluded customers on-boarded during the quarter to which the returns relate. All PSBs shall be required to interface with the Nigeria Inter-bank Settlement System (NIBSS) platform in order to promote interconnectivity and interoperability of operations within the Nigeria banking system.”