Banks suspend ATM, PoS transactions abroad

The bank said: “Due to current market realities on foreign exchange, we’ve reviewed cross border transaction limits for the  Naira Mastercard and the Naira Credit Card to $50 monthly.”

Stanbic IBTC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria and Guaranty Trust Bank had, few years back, announced the suspension of their overseas ATM card services.

Both banks advised their customers seeking to carry out transactions denominated in foreign exchange to apply for dollar or pounds sterling debit credit cards.

According to them, the dollar or pounds sterling debit or credit cards will be linked to the customers’ domiciliary accounts.

This is despite the fact that the banks have in the past few months reduced the monthly total amount of forex-denominated transactions that customers can do, using their naira debit or credit cards via ATMs and PoS terminals abroad as well as online payments or transactions.

Investigation showed that some banks had slashed their daily ATM withdrawal limit abroad from the $300 advised by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Bankers Committee to $100 due to their inability to source for dollars to fund the transactions.

Banking sources said banks were increasingly finding it difficult to fund their foreign-currency denominated services, especially online forex transactions and overseas ATM withdrawals, as well as PoS usage overseas by customers.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had earlier expressed concerns about the indiscriminate and suspicious manner in which some bank customers were spending dollars and other foreign currencies abroad through their naira debit cards.

To reduce forex spending abroad, the CBN directed that the $50,000 annual forex limit it imposed would be implemented and defaulters sanctioned.

The Nation