By David Stephen.Credit: naijapidginenglish.com
In accordance with the announced currency restructuring move of the Central Bank of Nigeria – to overhaul coins and bills in the country – and introduce the 5,000 naira note, the CBN will soon have coin dispensing feature in ATMs available. CBN announced that six naira denominations – 50 kobo, N1, N2, N5, N10, and N20 – will come as coins, and others – N50, N100, N200, N500, N1000, and N5000 – as bills.
Announcing the coin ATM move, the Head of Shared Services at the CBN, Chidi Umeano, said: “To achieve this plan, what is needed is to facilitate the inclusion of a process called ‘add-on’ to the ATMs; good enough, the existing ATMs have the ‘add-on’ feature that will easily make them adapt to coins dispensing.”
He continued: “It is very possible to achieve Automated Teller Machines that will dispense coins. This ‘add-on’ feature can be activated on the ATMs at any time by the CBN and this is not new because it is being practiced in advanced countries. This proposal is in consonance with our cash-less policy and also in line with the CBN’s effort to encourage Nigerians to appreciate coins.”
Coinage of some of denomination however, may result in discount or actual price for certain commodities, rather than usual rounding up of figures to the nearest zero, as we have it. The cash-less policy will also be bolstered by this as, people will buy stuffs and still have spendable, odd number change in their accounts.
