CBN extends BVN deadline for Nigerians abroad

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN on Thursday announced the extension of the deadline for the registration and linkage of the bank verification number, BVN, to accounts belonging to Nigerian banks’ customers living abroad.

CBN’s head, banking and payments department, Dipo Fatokun, said on Thursday that the deadline had been shifted from January 31, 2016 to June 30, 2016, while 30 new registration centres had been established in most major cities abroad to facilitate effective participation.

Mr. Fatokun explained that the extension became necessary to enable banks’ customers in the Diaspora complete the enrollment and link the BVN to their bank accounts.

He said the CBN had observed from a recent survey it conducted that the percentage of registration of Nigerian banks overseas was very low and needed to be increased to provide more outlets abroad.

He said this may be attributed to lack of accessibility to registration centres and availability of registration centres in some cities where Nigerian population was high.

To ensure that Nigerians took advantage of the deadline extension to register, Mr. Fatokun said fresh BVN registration centres have been opened in Washington DC, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco in the United States.

Other centres are located in London, Liecester and Manchester in the United Kingdom; Dubai in United Arab Emirate; Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa; Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia as well as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in China.

The new registration centres were also opened in Toronto and Vancouver in Canada; Paris in France; Rome in Italy; Sao Paulo in Brazil; New Delhi in India; Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth in Australia; Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Kiev in Ukraine.

Mr. Fatokun said the CBN was still considering further deployment of more registration centres for other locations with high Nigerian population.