The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN has ordered four Nigerian fintech companies to suspend creation of accounts for new customers.
The affected fintech are OPay, Palmpay, Kuda Bank, and Moniepoint, DAILY GIST reports.
This directive comes amidst investigations into allegations that accounts on these platforms have been used for illegal foreign exchange transactions.
A representative from two of the affected companies confirmed the CBN’s order is linked to these accusations.
However, they noted that the directive might be misdirected, as the majority of the implicated accounts belong to commercial banks, not fintech platforms.
“I can confirm that 90% of the accounts implicated in the illicit forex transactions are with commercial banks, and only 10% are with fintechs,” one of the sources said.
“Why then has the CBN not extended this directive to the commercial banks? We face a widespread issue here, and targeting fintechs seems like an unfair focus on the more vulnerable targets.”
According to a reports made available on Monday, 29th of April, 2024, the CBN considered “the new-account-ban necessary to curb money-laundering activities which have seen the naira again plunge against the dollar in recent days.”
The naira, as of Monday evening, traded at ₦1350 against the US Dollar, which is a regression against the steady climb that the Nigerian currency has made over the past few weeks as it traded to ₦950 in early April.
“Hello! We’ve temporarily paused new sign-ups on our platform,” Moniepoint wrote in a message on its platform for intending customers on Friday.
“This means that you’ll be unable to open a new account at the moment. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”
Following the drastic depreciation of the naira in February which nearly exchanged at ₦2000 to a dollar, CBN, in collaboration with anti-graft commission, EFCC have been cracking down on currency speculators to stabilise the naira.
