Nigerians are in a state of panic over ATMs not paying new Naira notes, three days to the CBN deadline for collecting old Naira notes.
Recall that the apex bank of Nigeria had mandated that all financial institutions should load their ATMs with the new Naira currency to help it circulate faster. However, many citizens have been complaining that the banks were not compliant.
Now, with just three days to the deadline set for receiving old notes, it is becoming increasingly clear that something drastic has to be done or the deadline shifted.
On social media, their have been several netizens complaining that they could not find a paying ATM, especially in the country’s economic powerhouse state, Lagos.
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To further compound matters, even if you braved the queue to withdraw over the counter, you would be met with the same situation. The writing has been on the wall all week long after some machines started limiting withdrawals to NGN20,000, at least, those paying customers with the new notes.
Small-scale vendors, who fear that they may be left stranded with cash that they cannot spend, have also begun rejecting the old currencies in some places. Typically, the option would be to opt for cashless transactions but not many of these traders have POS machines and the wait time for confirming bank transactions discourage many from accepting transfers, that is those with bank accounts.
Coupled with the outrageous prices of petrol (also called fuel), an essential commodity as the long queues have shown, the economic situation in the country is really biting down on everyone, from the poor to the average.
Twitter trends show that many are unhappy with the state of things and the government, and they are sharing their feelings where they can.
Fintechs could see this as an opportunity to offer their services to the several unbanked population of Nigeria to encourage cashless transactions. Although, the question now is how fast they can reach everyone, from the vendor with a stall to the petty trader on the roadside?
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