Deposit money banks, on Thursday, began issuing the redesigned Naira notes in compliance with directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
And to meet customers’ needs, the banks have started reconfiguring their Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs), to be recognize the news currency notes.
President Muhammadu Buhari recently unveiled the new bills at a weekly Federal Executive Council meeting in Aso Rock Villa.
He unveiled the redesigned notes across the N200, N500 and N1,000 denominations.
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, in October, announced that apex bank would release re-designed naira notes by December 15, 2022.
He also disclosed that the old notes would cease to be legal tender by January 31, 2023.
Emefiele pointed out that the redesigning of the Naira notes would help to curb counterfeit notes, and reduce ransom payments to terrorists and kidnappers.
The CBN boss said it is worrisome that 85 per cent of the total currency in circulation was being hoarded by Nigerians.
As such, he said the redesigning of the local currency would help to mop up the currency outside the banking sector, adding that out of about N3.3trillion in circulation, close to N2.75trillion were outside the banking sector.
Meanwhile, top officials of commercial banks confirmed that they have received the new notes from the CBN a couple of days ago, adding they released to their customers effective Thursday.
“We got the funds (new notes) about two days ago. Our head office has dispatched the funds to various area offices across the country. My branch will pick up our allocation at a nearby area office. We will start releasing the new notes to our customers by Thursday,” reports quoted a top official of a commercial bank as saying.
Other bank sources also said the new notes had arrived and were being kept in their vaults.
They confirmed the new notes would be paid to customers in banking halls beginning from Thursday.
Also, a manager at First Bank Plc said: “We have the funds from the CBN now. It came in some days ago but it will be made available to customers from tomorrow (Thursday).”
However, some bank officials claimed the amount of the new notes available to the various bank from the CBN was small.
According to them, most OTC payments will still have to be made using the old notes because the amount of the available new notes is still small.
“The amount given to us is small compared to what we need. For example, what is available to my branch is less than N1m. This is nothing compared to what we need. But I believe it will increase with time,” an official of FCMB in Lagos said.
Also, multiple banking sources confirmed they have started to reconfigure their ATMs, to identify the new Naira notes.
“The new notes have arrived, it will be made available to customers from tomorrow (Thursday)” an official of Polaris Bank
A top bank executive said: “Most of the banks have started reconfiguring their ATMs so that they can identify the new notes of N1000, N500 and N200.”’