The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday hinted of its plans to soon release regulatory guidelines on the activities of Financial Technology Companies (FinTechs) in the country.

The apex bank’s Director, Banking and Payments System Department, Mr. Dipo Fatokun, gave the hint during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Nigeria electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) with the theme, “Tightening the BELT of E-fraud Prevention: a 4-sided approach”.

Fatokun, who debunked the speculations that FinTechs would take over the role of banks, said however that given their strategic roles in the nation’s financial system, some roles may be ceded to them.

He clarified: “There is this fear, probably in some quarters, that FinTechs will take over the role of banks, but we believe that will not happen. Some activities will have to be ceded to these FinTechs.  Because of the importance of these FinTechs, CBN is drafting guidelines that would enable their regulation and supervision to be put in place.”

The Director, who is also the Chairman of NeFF, explained that the forum was convened for the purposes of  strenghtening the engagement of all stakeholders to increase knowledge and information sharing and deepen the payment system capacity for success in the fight against electronic fraud.

Fatokun said: “The issue of stability, trust in the payment system is very close to the heart of the management of CBN, so each time the governors come together they discuss it and issue guidelines and that is a continuous process,” he stated.

In his remarks, the apex bank’s Deputy Governor Operations, CBN, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, who was represented by Director, Other Financial Institutions Department (OFID), Mrs. Tokunbo Martins, noted that even though technology in the industry was just gaining traction, collaboration in the financial industry has improved.

He explained:“Collaboration is much better than before. All the industry players have now realized that unless we work together, unless there is a consented effort together, there is really no way we are going to overcome this menace.

“The Forum’s role has contributed to year-on-year (YoY) deduction in actual losses from e-fraud, as reported in the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS”, Adelabu added.

It would be recalled that the apex bank released recently a new regulatory framework for the use of unstructured supplementary service data (USSD)  aimed at enhancing the security of electronic payments in the country. The new framework came into effect on the 1st of June, 2018.

Part of its provisions includes a limit to the number of an amount to 100,000 for a customer per day transactions and also the introduction of a 2nd level authentication by customers for all transactions above N20,000.