A number of Deposit Money Banks in the country have barred their
customers from using debit and credit cards to withdraw dollars, euros,
pounds and other foreign currencies whenever they travel abroad,
investigation by our correspondent has revealed.
The development
may put business and leisure travellers, who may need hard currencies to
meet some obligations abroad, in a difficult situation.
Also,
students who are studying abroad and often rely on withdrawing hard
currencies with their Nigerian payment cards from Automatic Teller
Machines abroad to meet certain needs may find the
situation
challenging.
Findings by our correspondent revealed that the
naira volatility of the past year made many of the Nigerian banks to get
their fingers burnt and the fear of losing heavily to possible future
currency volatility was making them to exercise restraint in
reactivating overseas ATM withdrawal services for their customers.
However,
some banks, which are said to be having high risk appetite and some
with partner banks overseas to make settlements easier, are having a
smooth ride and as such, have reactivated the ATM withdrawal service
overseas.
A top banker close to the development, who spoke to our
correspondent under the condition of anonymity said, “Each bank has
various reasons for not yet activating their overseas ATM cash
withdrawal service. For some banks, they ran into losses last year when
the naira fell and, as such, they are trying to minimise their risks
now.
“For such banks, there is no plan to reactivate it. Some
others banks are not ready to reactivate the service because they are
trying to check customers who are doing round-tripping. It is for
various reasons that the banks are not stopping yet.”
Findings by
our correspondent revealed that while almost all the banks allowed
customers to use their payment cards to do Point of Sale and web
transactions overseas, a number of them had suspended their ATM cash
withdrawals without indicating when they would resume.
It was
gathered that Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Fidelity Bank Plc, Stanbic IBTC
Bank and Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria were among the lenders that had
suspended their ATM cash withdrawal services.
When our
correspondent put a call through to their customer service centres, the
banks confirmed they had suspended the services without stating the
reason and possible resumption plans.
The customer service personnel, however, said the PoS service abroad and Web services were available for customers to use.
Some
bankers told our correspondent that in terms of volume, Nigerian banks
were spending more in overseas settlements from PoS and Web than in ATM
cash withdrawal.
They said the fear of money laundering by customers was a major reason why some banks had to stop ATM cash withdrawal overseas.
They
also stated that for some banks, the settlement issues they had when
the dollar was scarce last year was making them to limit their card
usage abroad to only PoS and Web transactions.
Following the
crash in global oil prices, the drop in Nigeria’s foreign exchange
revenue and the resultant dollar scarcity that hit the economy had made
the local banks to suspend the ATM cash withdrawal and the PoS services
abroad. They also stopped web transactions.
However, following the improvement in forex supply early this year, some banks announced the resumption of the services.
Some
of the banks that have resumed full services in these area include
United Bank for Africa Plc and First Bank of Nigeria Limited. Similarly,
Zenith Bank Plc, Ecobank Nigeria and Skye Bank Plc have announced that
their customers can do the ATM cash withdrawal, the PoS and web
transactions.
But some of the banks, which have yet to resume full services, claimed that the regulator was not giving them approval to do so.
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