In a new circular dated May 6, 2024, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) enacted a new transaction levy tagged “Cybersecurity Levy” on all electronic transactions in all banks, commercial and other financial institutions. According to the circular, “Following the enactment of the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) (amendment) Act 2024 and under the provision of Section 44 (2)(a) of the Act, “a levy of 0.5% (0.005) equivalent to a half percent of all electronic transactions value by the business specified in the second schedule of the Act, is to be remitted to the National Cybersecurity Fund (NCF), which shall be administered by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).”

The levy shall be deducted from the source of the transaction and immediately commence within two (2) weeks from the date the circular is released for commercial banks and within eight (8) weeks for other financial institutions. This is added to the already existing transaction charges such as stamp duty, electronic levy and SMS charge.

How does this affect you?

In an analysis made by StatiSense, every N1000 transaction incurs a N5 fee, N50 for N10,000 transactions, and so on. The levy is dependent on how much transactions you make.

Since the adoption of the cashless policy, the CBN has introduced multiple charges on withdrawals and deposits. The cybersecurity levy is the latest charge and it follows the reintroduction of a 2% charge on deposits above N500,000 by banks. In the circular, failure to remit the levy attracts a fine of not less than 2% of the annual turnover of the defaulting business, among other penalties.

However, according to the circular, the following are exempted from the cybersecurity levy:

•  Loan disbursements and repayments.
• ⁠Salary payments.
•  ⁠Intra-account transfers within the same bank or between different banks for the same customer.
• ⁠ ⁠Intra-bank transfers between customers of the same bank.
•  ⁠Other Financial Institutions (OFls) instructions to their correspondent banks.
• ⁠ ⁠Interbank placements.
•  ⁠Banks’ transfers to CBN and vice-versa.
•  ⁠Inter-branch transfers within a bank.
• ⁠ ⁠Cheques clearing and settlements.
• ⁠ ⁠Letters of Credits (LCs).
• ⁠ ⁠Banks recapitalization related funding – only bulk funds movement from collection accounts
• ⁠ ⁠Savings and deposits including transactions involving long-term investments such as Treasury Bills, Bonds, and Commercial Papers.
• ⁠ ⁠Government Social Welfare Programs transactions e.g. Pension payments.
• ⁠Non-profit and charitable transactions including donations to registered nonprofit organisations or charities.
• ⁠ ⁠Educational Institutions transactions, including tuition payments and other transactions involving schools, universities, or other educational institutions.
• Transactions involving bank’s internal accounts such as suspense accounts, clearing accounts, profit and loss accounts, inter-branch accounts, reserve accounts, nostro and vostro accounts, and escrow accounts.

How are Nigerians reacting to this?

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You can download the full circular here.