Customers won’t pay for returning bad notes – CBN

The Central Bank of Nigeria on Sunday said that customers of banks would not be charged any fee for returning mutilated naira notes after the September 2 deadline.

Isaac Okorafor, the CBN director, corporate communications department, said this during a telephone interview.
He said the June to September window given by the CBN was for banks to bring their mutilated naira notes to the CBN without sorting, adding that this would be sorted out by the apex bank for free.

He said at the expiry of the deadline, any bank bringing mutilated naira note to the CBN without sorting would pay a fee.

When asked if the fee to be paid by the banks would be transferred to their respective customers returning bad naira notes later, he said, “No, it’s the banks’ own cost of operation. The customers are not going to pay for returning the mutilated notes. It’s the duty of banks to collect the notes.

Okorafor said the fee to be paid by banks to the CBN for sorting of naira notes was part of their operating cost.

He called on customers of banks to continue to return their mutilated naira notes to the banks even after the deadline as it was a continuous exercise.

He said, “We opened a window from June to September so that when they brought the notes without sorting, we could sort the notes for them free. But as from September 2, if they get those notes, they need to sort them before they bring them to us. The September 2 deadline is when we will stop the free sorting of mutilated naira notes for banks. But they will continue to collect the notes and sort them themselves. So people should continue to return the mutilated naira notes to the bank.”