CBN should revisit its new POS rule

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has never lacked the impulse for reforms. Its recent directive restricting each Point-of-Sale, PoS, operator to a single terminal is clearly born of a noble intent: to sanitise an informal sector that has occasionally become a playground for bad actors.

By seeking to track every Kobo through a “one-agent-one-principal” framework, the apex bank aims to close the loopholes used for fraud and money laundering. However, in the complex architecture of Nigeria’s “jungle” economy, a directive that looks perfect on a spreadsheet can prove catastrophic on the streets.

The POS Operators and Allied Informal Financial Workers of Nigeria, PAFWUN, has raised an alarm that the regulator must not ignore. Their primary grievance—the notorious instability of Nigeria’s digital infrastructure—is not a mere excuse; it is a daily reality. In a country where network downtime is as frequent as rain in July, a single-terminal policy is a recipe for business paralysis.

When an operator’s sole provider goes offline, their livelihood ceases. For the millions of Nigerians in rural hamlets and urban slums, this “dead” terminal means they cannot access cash for food, medicine, or transport. It also means the operator cannot feed his or her family.

This policy risks unintended social carnage. At a time when the nation is battling staggering unemployment, we cannot afford to push hundreds of thousands more of micro-entrepreneurs into the abyss of poverty. By limiting an agent’s ability to offer a variety of services from multiple providers, the CBN is inadvertently strangulating the very financial inclusion it claims to champion.

The missing ingredient here is robust stakeholder engagement. Regulators must resist the urge to govern from ivory towers. Policy-making should be a symphony, not a monologue. When the CBN dictates without consulting the “foot soldiers” of the financial front-lines, it creates regulations that hurt the most vulnerable players while failing to address the root causes of insecurity.

Instead of imposing restrictive “exclusivity” rules that stifle trade, the Federal Government must double down on what already exists. The Bank Verification Number, BVN, and National Identification Number, NIN, are powerful, underutilised weapons. If these identity platforms were fully integrated and strengthened, the CBN would not need to limit an operator to one machine. They could easily track every Naira to a specific human identity, regardless of which terminal is used.

The CBN must take a second look. Regulation should be a bridge to prosperity, not a barrier to survival. We urge the apex bank to return to the drawing board, sit with the operators, and find a middle ground that ensures security without sacrificing the livelihoods of the very people it is meant to serve.

To do otherwise is to make life unnecessarily difficult for a society already pushed to its limits.

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