The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed banks and other financial institutions to implement a 0.5 percent cybersecurity levy on electronic transfers.
This is contained in a circular signed by Chibuzor Efobi, director of payments system management and Haruna Mustafa, director of financial policy and regulation on Monday.
The directive was issued to commercial, merchant, non-interest and payment service banks, as well as mobile money operators.
CBN said the policy would take effect in two weeks and charges would be described as ‘Cybersecurity Levy’.
According to the apex bank, the deduction and collection of the cybersecurity levy is a sequel to the enactment of the Cybercrime (prohibition, prevention etc) Amendment Act of 2024.
“Following the enactment of the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) (amendment) Act 2024 and under the provision of Section 44 (2)(a) of the Act, “a levy of 0.5% (0.005) equivalent to a half percent of all electronic transactions value by the business specified in the second schedule of the Act, is to be remitted to the National Cybersecurity Fund (NCF), which shall be administered by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA),” CBN said.
CBN said the charges would be remitted to the national cyber security fund, which would be administered by the office of the NSA.
“Deductions shall commence within two (2) weeks from the date of this circular for all financial institutions and the monthly remittance of the levies collected in bulk to the NCF account domiciled at the CBN by the 5th business day of every subsequent month.”
CBN said failure to remit the levy is an offence which attracts a fine of not less than 2 percent of the annual turnover of the defaulting business, amongst others.
Exempted from the levy include loan disbursements and repayments, salary payments, intra-account transfers within the same bank or between different banks for the same customer, intra-bank transfers between customers of the same bank.
Also exempted from the levy were inter-branch transfers within a bank, cheque clearing and settlements, letters of credits, banks’ recapitalisation-related funding only bulk funds movement from collection accounts, savings and deposits including transactions involving long-term investments such as treasury bills, bonds, and commercial papers.
Others are government social welfare programmes transactions e.g. pension payments; non-profit and charitable transactions, including donations to registered non-profit organisations or charities; educational institutions’ transactions, including tuition payments and other transactions involving schools, universities, or other educational institutions; and transactions involving bank’s internal accounts such as suspense accounts, clearing accounts, profit and loss accounts, inter-branch accounts, reserve accounts, nostro and vostro accounts, and escrow accounts.
Meanwhile, earlier, banks announced the reintroduction of 2 percent charge on deposits above N500,000.
