CBN suspends Paystack, others from offering BVN validation services

Wale Ameen
Online Editor

In what appears to be a sweeping policy clampdown and shift, the Central Bank of Nigeria has moved to suspend some major Fintechs and third-party partners offering BVN validation services.

The apex bank has reportedly suspended Fintechs like Paystack and others from offering BVN validation service.

This was revealed by Paystack in an email to its customers, a part of which reads,  “We’ve recently been made aware of a regulatory directive from the primary custodian of Nigeria’s BVN service to all their partners to suspend the provision of the BVN validation service to their third-party partners. This directive affects every non-bank in Nigeria that offers BVN Validation services. In light of this news, we’re hereby informing you that the BVN Resolve service will be temporarily unavailable starting at midnight, April 8, 2021.”

This essentially means that non-bank platforms majorly in the fintech space will have to look else where for their customer validation processes.

This is coming on the heels of the apex banks move to freeze 194 bank accounts belonging to firms and Bureaux de Change. This is to enable it conduct investigations into suspected suspicious activities.

The bank made this disclosure on Thursday in three separate documents on its website.

The bank said it got orders from the Federal High Court, Abuja division to freeze the accounts of Bluebeam Capital Limited which were domiciled in 13 different banks.

According to information made available, Bluebeam as the respondent had eight accounts each in both Access Bank and Keystone Bank, another seven each in First Bank and Ecobank while it had another five each in UBA and GTBank as well as 6 other banks.

In another document, the CBN said it had another order to freeze 84 other accounts in 17 banks with the third document showing that the apex bank had yet another order empowering it to freeze another 50 accounts domiciled in various banks.