The Central Bank of Nigeria on Monday directed all banks to start collecting a 0.5% cybersecurity tax on all electronic transactions in the country.
The apex bank stated this in a circular signed by the Director of Payment Systems Management, Chibuzo Efobi. Haruna Mustafa, Director of the Department of Financial Policy and Regulation; A copy of it was obtained by his PUNCH Online.
The circular was addressed to all commercial banks, merchant banks, interest-free banks, and payment services banks, among others. It pointed out that the implementation of the levy will start for two weeks from Monday.
“The levy will be applied at the time of initiation of the electronic transfer and will then be deducted and remitted by the financial institution. The deducted amount shall be reflected in the customer’s account with the narration “Cybersecurity Tax.”” The circular is written in part.
In this article, PUNCH Online highlights all 16 banking transactions that are exempt from the CBN’s new cybersecurity levy.
- Loan execution and repayment
- salary payment
- Intra-account transfers within the same bank or between different banks for the same customer
- Intrabank transfers between customers of the same bank
- Instructions to correspondent banks of other financial institutions
- interbank transactions,
- Transfer money from your bank to CBN and vice versa
- Inter-branch remittance within a bank
- Confirm clearing and settlement
- letter of credit
- Financing related to bank recapitalization – lump sum fund transfer from collection account only
- Savings deposits that include transactions involving long-term investments such as short-term securities, bonds, and commercial paper.
- Government social welfare program transactions (e.g. pension payments)
- Non-profit and charitable transactions, including donations to registered non-profit organizations or charities
- Educational Institution Transactions (including tuition payments and other transactions involving schools, universities, or other educational institutions)
- Transactions related to internal accounts of the bank such as suspense accounts, clearing accounts, profit and loss accounts, interbranch accounts, reserve accounts, nostro and vostro accounts, escrow accounts.
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