The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued a directive banning banks and financial technology companies (fintechs) from providing international money transfer services. The revised guidelines for the operations of International Money Transfer Operators (IMTOs) were officially released on January 31, 2024. The new rules state that banks can no longer operate international money transfer services but can act as agents, and fintech companies are not allowed to obtain approval for IMTO. The ban now extends to fintechs, whereas in the previous guidelines issued in 2014, only deposit money banks were prohibited.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the CBN has increased the application fee for an IMTO license from N500,000 in 2014 to N10 million in the revised guidelines, marking a significant increase of about 1,900% in about 10 years. The guidelines outline a non-refundable application fee of N10 million, along with other requirements such as evidence of tax clearance, incorporation documents in Nigeria, and an annual renewal fee of N10 million.<\/p>\n
The CBN has also established a minimum operating capital requirement for IMTOs at $1 million for foreign entities and an equivalent amount for local IMTOs. This is a change from the previous requirement of N2 billion for Nigerian companies and N50 million for foreign companies.<\/p>\n
The regulatory measures are seen as part of the CBN’s efforts to instill stability in the foreign exchange market and curb foreign currency speculation and hoarding among Nigerian banks. While this move is aimed at strengthening the currency and stabilizing the forex market, it may add complexity to remittance payments into the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued a directive banning banks and financial technology companies (fintechs) from providing international money transfer services. The revised guidelines for the operations of International Money Transfer Operators (IMTOs) were officially released on January 31, 2024. The new rules state that banks can no longer operate international money transfer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":18069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18068"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18141,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18068\/revisions\/18141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}