Pascal Arogorn Ibe
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revoked the operating licenses of seven Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and one switching company, the regulator announced yesterday.
An official gazette of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, dated November 30, 2020 and signed by the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, which was posted on the apex bank’s website, listed the affected PSPs as, Easifuel Limited, Transaction Processing System (TPS), Grand Towers Limited, Paymaster Limited, E-Revenue Gateway Limited, Eartholeum Network Limited and Globasure Limited. It also named the PSP whose switch license was revoked as 3Line Card Management Limited.
According to the gazette the affected companies lost their licenses for failing to comply with the obligations imposed on them by the CBN in accordance with provisions of the Banks and other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA) Cap B3, Laws of the Federation 2004. Specifically, the gazette said the companies had failed to perform the role for which their licenses were issued, “for a continuous period of six months.”
Analysts believe that the CBN’s action indicates that the apex bank is committed to ensuring that it achieves the 95 per cent financial inclusion rate by 2024 target that it set for the country in 2019.
The CBN had, on December 10, unveiled new license categorisations for the country’s payments system, which, it said, “offers clarity for new and existing market participants given the significant evolution and innovation in the Nigerian payments system.”
Under the new framework, payments system licensing was streamlined according to permissible activities in four broad categories: Switching and Processing; Mobile Money Operations (MMOs); Payment Solution Services (PSSs) and Regulatory Sandbox.
The regulator stated that while all new licensing requests, including those with Approvals-in-Principle, are to comply with the new reon quirements immediately, “existing licensed payment companies are to comply with the new licensing requirements where applicable not later than end-June 2021.”
It would be recalled that the CBN also, last month, revoked the operating licenses of 42 Micro-Finance banks (MFBs), a move analysts said, was part of the apex bank’s efforts to weed out technically insolvent operators in the industry.
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