It has been over a period of time the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced the cashless policy with the aim of reducing the quantum of physical cash in circulation. According to the CBN governor Godwin Emefiele, the policy was also targeted at tracking money laundering activities as well as cut down on cash handling expenses of banks. Emefiele, had noted last year that with the several investments in technological infrastructure in the Nigerian banking industry which has made electronic payment near seamless, it was high time the country went fully cashless. The CBN Governor On October 26, 2022 announced that it was going to redesign the N200, N500 and N1, 000 denominations and urged Nigerians to swap the old naira notes with the new ones. Moving the deadline from January 31 to February 10 with a ten days grace period, the policy is generating more reactions from Nigerians as the new notes are scarce despite assurances by the apex bank that the banks should continue to load their ATMs with the new notes.
This scarcity has affected so many areas of the economy especially the small and medium scale enterprises, petty traders etc. unlike super markets and big retailers who already have POS machines and other means of exchange for their transactions, and have evolved going about their businesses with very little need for cash, the SME’s and petty traders who sell your everyday goods and services rely solely on cash transactions to keep their businesses going, this is as a result of the fact that they sell their products and services in small quantities, up until now there has been no solid and derived means to find alternative ways of collecting money from their customers. However this new cashless policy by the CBN has brought about the need for adaptation in order for their business to continue. Going to the market by an everyday Nigerian has become a challenge with the recent scarcity of cash, petty trade sellers and buyers have had to resort to the digital means of exchanges, like bank transfers, CBN approved transaction platforms like Opay, PalmPay and POS transactions. This mode of transaction comes with challenges which include slow network, delay in receiving credit and debit alert and some banks not having network at all.
