The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has imposed a 0.5 percent cybersecurity levy on all electronic transactions within the country.
In a circular signed by the Director, Payments System Management Department, Chibuzo Efobi; and the Director, Financial Policy and Regulation Department, Haruna Mustafa; the CBN directed all commercial, merchant, non-interest, and payment service banks, among others; to commence charging the levy from May 20.
“The levy shall be applied at the point of electronic transfer origination, then deducted and remitted by the financial institution. The deducted amount shall be reflected in the customer’s account with the narration, ‘Cybersecurity Levy,” the circular partly read.
The CBN, however, exempted 16 banking transactions from paying the new levy.
The exempted transactions are: 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; and Other Financial Institutions instructions to their correspondent banks.
Others are Interbank placements; Banks’ transfers to CBN and vice-versa; Inter-branch transfers within a bank; Cheque clearing and settlements; Letters of Credits; Banks’ recapitalisation-related funding – only bulk funds movement from collection accounts; and Savings and deposits, including transactions involving long-term investments such as Treasury Bills, Bonds, and Commercial Papers.
Also exempted from paying the cybersecurity levy 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.
