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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