Nuhu Ribadu
You must have heard about a newly introduced levy by Nigerian banks on all their customers conducting online transactions with their banks.
Unlike what could be considered as the public belief on this developing levy, this charge is not initiated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and none of the Nigerian banks will have a share of the deduction.
The deducted fees will be remitted to the account of the Offices of the National Security Adviser (NSA) under the leadership of the former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.
Below is a highlight of the circular recently made available to the public by the CBN to financial institutions to start the deduction of the Cyber security Levy.
1. There is a Cyber security (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) Amendment Act 2024 (An Amendment of the 2015 Act) which prescribed a levy of 0.5% of all transaction value.
2. Four days ago, the NSA directed the full implementation of the Act. This was referenced in the first paragraph of the CBN circular.
3. The fee is a debit charge to the initiator of the electronic transfer and not to the receiver of the transfer.
4. The simple way to calculate the fee is to remove the last 3 digits of a transfer and divide it by 2. For instance, if you transfer N10,000 - Remove the last 3 figures (000) and divide the remaining figure (10) by 2. This gives you N5 as your CSL.
5. There are exemptions to the fee.
- Salary Payments are exempted
- Intra-account transfers within the same bank for the same customers are exempted
- Inter-account transfers between different banks for the same customers are exempted.
- Intra-bank transfers between customers of the same banks are exempted.
- Cheque payments are exempted
- Savings And Deposits are exempted (not sure whether this includes Savings accounts - Need To check)
- Pension Payments are exempted
- Educational Institution transactions are exempted
- Donations to NGOs are exempted. That means your tithes and offerings will not be charged.
6. This is not a bank levy. It was not initiated by the CBN. It is a Tax payable to the government. Think of it as a second AMF (Account Maintenance Fee) but this time to the government and not the bank. The CBN is just an implementation entity.
7. The newly introduced Cyber Security Fee could be summarized as payment of:
N0.5 on N1,000
N5 on N10,000
N50 on N100,000
N500 on N1,000,000
N5,000 on N10,000,000
Note:
Going by the current deduction profile on all electronic transactions taking place on Nigerian banking platforms, the newly introduced Cyber Security Fee could be taken directly as a duplication of the maintenance fee that is already being deducted from all transactions taking place on the CBN banking platforms.
Recall that on every transaction conducted by a bank customer on any of the banking platforms, the following deductions are inevitable.
STAMP DUTY: Receivers pay N50 on all transactions made below N10,000,001
TRANSFER FEES: Senders pay varied charges on the transaction conducted on any of the Nigerian banking platforms. The rate of the charges include:
N10 on ≤ N5,000
N25 on N5,001 — N50,000
N50 on > N50,000
VALUE ADDED TAX: Senders pay varied charges depending on the amount involved in the transaction. This could be modeled as paying:
N0.75 on N10 Transfer fee
N1.875 on N25 Transfer fee
N3.75 on N50 Transfer fee
SMS FEE: Unfortunately, both the senders and the receivers bear the payments of N4 on each electronic transfer notification received by the customers, irrespective of whether the event was triggered by the client or the banking system.
Besides, with all Nigerian bank customers paying maintenance fees monthly over all transactions conducted by them, is this newly interested Cyber Security Levy not a duplication of charges, an act of exploitation, or a sign of incompetence on the side of the commercial banks and the CBN who might have failed woefully to achieve the purpose for which the money are being deducted?
Above all, since the Office of the NSA has its annual budget and not an Internal Revenue Generation department of the government, what does the office have to do with deducting levies from Nigerian bank users whereas the Federation Account remains strange to the levy?
Category: World-News
Tag: Detail of the Cyber Security Fee To Be Paid By All Bank Users In Nigeria
Written by Author (author)
Published 5/7/2024 7:16:04 PM