On Thursday, reports claimed that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) initiated a new directive that will reduce the daily cash withdrawal limit from banks’ ATMs to N20,000 from N100,000.
However, TechEconomy was unable to find any verification of the report’s veracity on CBN’s website or social media networks.
The new policy implies that customers would only be permitted to withdraw a total of N20,000 each day from their account(s) as a result of the change, regardless of the bank or the number of accounts they manage.
The new review was communicated to deposit money banks earlier in the week and already took effect from January 23, 2023, THE WITNESS reported.
Also, the CBN had instructed commercial banks to link customers’ bank verification numbers (BVNs) to their ATM cards to ensure that no customer can use two or more banks to exceed the N20,000 limit in a day.
Recall that the CBN had at the initial stage pegged individual cash withdrawals per week at N100,000; while corporate organizations were limited to weekly withdrawals of N500,000.
After public outcry and summons by Nigerian lawmakers, the apex bank led by Governor Godwin Emefiele raised its weekly cash withdrawal limits set for individuals and corporate organizations to N500,000 and N5 million, respectively.
Now, the CBN has made a u-turn to the initial plan.
One of the institutions that confirmed this development is Fidelity Bank via an email on Wednesday.
In an email message to its customers on Wednesday, the lender said: “Please be informed that the Central Bank of Nigeria has revised its daily cash withdrawal limit on ATM from M100,000 to 20,000 effective 23rd January 2023.
“This means that you will only be able to withdraw a cumulative daily amount of N20,000 from your account across all ATMs irrespective of the bank.”
