Enrollments for the Bank Verification Number (BVN) by bank account owners in the country have increased to 63.4 million in September 2024, the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) disclosed in its just released BVN data.
Previous data released by the organisation showed that the enrollment database for BVN stood at 62.7 million in July.
This indicates that a total of 750,048 account owners registered for the BVN in the last two months.
As of December 2023, the total registered BVN stood at 60 million, according to NIBSS data, suggesting that the BVN database grew by 3.4 million so far this year.
The rise in BVN registrations this year may be linked to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) directive issued in December 2023, instructing all banks to freeze any accounts not connected to a BVN by April 2024.
Part of the directive also required all commercial, merchant, non-interest, payment service banks, other financial institutions, and mobile money operators, to mandate the BVN or National Identification Number (NIN) for all accounts and wallets.
Meanwhile, the number of active bank accounts in the country shows that there is still a wide gap between the number of accounts and the number of BVN, which is now a compulsory requirement for opening an account.
According to the recent banking data released by NIBSS, the number of active bank accounts in Nigeria stood at 231.1 million in July 2024.
Going by the current number of BVNs, there is still a wide gap between the number of accounts and the registered BVNs.
However, industry analysts believe that the difference may not be much, given that multiple accounts can be linked to a single BVN.
According to Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA) and Financial Services in Nigeria 2023 Survey report, 5% or about 3 million of banked adults do not have a BVN or NIN.
