POS Operators Acting Like Payment Agents Will Be Prosecuted – CBN

The Central Bank of Nigeria has come out to vow to clamp down on Point of Sale owners who have turned themselves to payment agents to take advantage of members of the public.

This was recently revealed by the Director, Governor’s Department, CBN, Mr Joseph Omayuku, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, such unaccredited payment agents are fifth columnists whose activities constituted economic sabotage, so it would carry out sting operations around the country this week to arrest and prosecute them.

He added that these PoS operators also engage in the selling of naira notes for naira notes to buyers amidst rejection of online payments by some business operators, including petrol stations and supermarkets.

His words, “Further reviews have indicated that it does appear as if there are fifth columnists operating in this system, and these fifth columnists, as it appears, are anybody that has PoS access. Several of them have now taken to the unfortunate activity of turning themselves to payment agents.”

“So you find out that even next to petrol stations, their agents or PoS operators next to them are there who you will go to, to sell money to you and you take that money to go and buy petrol; and not just petrol stations, in short, everywhere.”

“From this week, there will be very sting operations around the country. Because this (selling of naira) is the incentive. The incentive is that they can sell our currency to us, which is not supposed to be. You cannot be selling naira to us.”

“The operational arrangement for payment agents is that they take a commission for transaction and this commission is not more than N100 or N200 for transaction of up to N10,000. But we have heard of cases where people are being charged N1,000 or N2,000. This is certainly fraudulent; this is rogue operation.”

“The management of the CBN and the leaders of the country do not subscribe to any logic that will allow people to operate like this. So, the security agencies will be very active this week, going forward.”