The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday, ordered banks operating in the country to start charging a cybersecurity levy on transactions.
This was disclosed in a circular issued by the Director of Payment Services, Mr Uzoma Efobi.
The circular, which was addressed to all commercial, merchant, non-interest, and payment service banks, among others; noted that the implementation of the levy would start two weeks from Monday, May 6, 2024.
“The levy shall be applied at the point of electronic transfer origination, then deducted and remitted by the financial institution. The deducted amount shall be reflected in the customer’s account with the narration, ‘Cybersecurity Levy,’” the circular partly read.
However, below is all the 16 banking transactions that are exempted from the CBN’s new cybersecurity levy:
1. Loan disbursements and repayments.
2. Salary payments.
3. Intra-account transfers within the same bank or between different banks for the same customer.
4. Intra-bank transfers between customers of the same bank.
5. Other Financial Institutions instructions to their correspondent banks.
6. Interbank placements
7. Banks’ transfers to CBN and vice-versa
8. Inter-branch transfers within a bank
9. Cheque clearing and settlements
10. Letters of Credits
11. Banks’ recapitalisation-related funding – only bulk funds movement from collection accounts.
12. Savings and deposits, including transactions involving long-term investments such as Treasury Bills, Bonds, and Commercial Papers.
13. Government Social Welfare Programmes transactions e.g. Pension payments
14. Non-profit and charitable transactions, including donations to registered non-profit organisations or charities
15. Educational institutions’ transactions, including tuition payments and other transactions involving schools, universities, or other educational institutions
16. 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.