The federal government has disclosed its plan to link bank customers' bank verification numbers (BVN) with their national identity card data from next year.
According to This Day, the Managing Director, Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) Mr. Ade Shonubi, made this known in a paper presented at the ongoing workshop for financial journalists organised by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) in Ilorin, yesterday.
Shonubi, who was represented by the Chief Risk Officer, NIBSS, Mr. Osioke Ojior, spoke on "Managing Risks of e-Banking."
He said the move would further strengthen efficiency in Nigeria's payment system.
According to the NIBSS boss, the objective of the BVN is to use biometric information as a means of first identifying and verifying all individuals that have account(s) in any Nigerian bank and consequently, as a means of authenticating customer's identity at the point of transactions.
The BVN scheme was launched in 2014. Shonubi noted that the benefits of the BVN project include credit check, know-your-customer, fraud management and transaction authentication. However, he listed categories of risks in the payment system to include strategic, preventable and external.