Nigerian Mobile Banking App Buckle Under First Major Test

By Uche Mbah

Mobile Banking Apps were overstretched Wednesday with Banking Halls overflowing with bitter and customers trying to raise cash for daily transaction. Many people who tried to deal on transfers met congested network.

A woman, who says she had a flight to catch to Abuja from Lagos, said she spent the previous day trying unsuccessfully to do mobile transfer. “I had to wake up at midnight to try again before the transfer could go. This morning, I have not been able to achieve anything. Who will believe that, driving this car, I have only N70 cash on me? God will help us”, she said.

Mike Asuquo, a veteran cartoonist, wrote on his Facebook wall: “Years after going digital, Nigerian bank apps can’t stand the first major stress test. They were more designed to deduct.

Nansense”.

Most automatic teller machines visited by this magazine could neither dispense the old nor the new notes.

This came a day after the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, Godwin Emefiele, assured the House of Representatives that he has directed

Commercial banks in Nigeria to continue to accept old naira notes from customers after the February 10 deadline. He, however, decried the surfacing of new notes at venues of Social parties, saying that Commercial Banks are Complicit in the misdemeanor.

Emefiele, appearing before the ad hoc committee set up by the House on the CBN naira redesign policy after several invitations, did not state for how long the expired noted would still be accepted by the banks, though it is believed that it will last till February 17th, according to his earlier statement Sunday.

Emefiele was accused by the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, of breaching Section 20 of the CBN Act. The section, according to the Speaker, makes it mandatory for commercial banks to accept old notes even after the deadline.

“After the expiration date, such naira notes changed will no longer be legal tender but it also says that even five months, three months, or two months after, even in June, all the old notes presented to the bank shall be redeemed by the bank,” Gbajabiamila said last Thursday after threatening to issue a warrant of arrest for Emefiele. Emefiele, however, apologized for not having honored the previous invitations, an apology the Speaker accepted.

But Emefiele totally agreed with the lawmakers on the controversial section.

“Section 20 says even after the old currency has lost its legal tender status that we are mandated to collect that money. And I stand with the House of Reps on this,” he said. “If you have your money that you have not been able to send to the bank, we will certainly give you the opportunity to bring them back into the CBN to redeem it. Either you pay it to your bank account or you want to do an exchange — we give you. You will not lose your money. This is the assurance I give to Nigerians.”

He said that the CBN had deployed 30,000 agents to attend to Nigerians that are located in difficult areas because of the and nature of businesses.