In a circular signed by the Director, Payments System Management Department (PSMD), Chibuzo Efobi; and the Director, Financial Policy and Regulation Department (FPRD), Haruna Mustafa; the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday directed all banks to commence charging a 0.5 per cent cybersecurity levy on all electronic transactions within the country.
Implementation of the levy which shall be applied at the point of electronic transfer origination and reflected in the customer’s account, would start two weeks from Monday, May 6, 2024.
However, see below all the 16 banking transactions that are exempted from the CBN’s new cybersecurity levy:
- Loan disbursements and repayments
- Salary payments
- Intra-account transfers within the same bank or between different banks for the same customer
- Intra-bank transfers between customers of the same bank
- Other Financial Institutions instructions to their correspondent banks
- Interbank placements,
- Banks’ transfers to CBN and vice-versa
- Inter-branch transfers within a bank
- Cheque clearing and settlements
- Letters of Credits
- Banks’ recapitalisation-related funding – only bulk funds movement from collection accounts
- Savings and deposits, including transactions involving long-term investments such as Treasury Bills, Bonds, and Commercial Papers.
- Government Social Welfare Programmes transactions e.g. Pension payments
- Non-profit and charitable transactions, including donations to registered non-profit organisations or charities
- Educational institutions’ transactions, including tuition payments and other transactions involving schools, universities, or other educational institutions
- Transactions involving bank’s internal accounts such as suspense accounts, clearing accounts, profit and loss accounts, inter-branch accounts, reserve accounts, nostro and vostro accounts, and escrow accounts.