 The central bank of Nigeria says since the launch of the cashless policy in 2012, Nigeria has made remarkable progress at the global financial stage. The deputy governor financial system stability Aisha Ahmad made the explanation when she was answering questions from lawmakers of the House of Representatives. She also said the policy introduced on the 5th of December was in continuation of the cashless policy as the banking system strives to ensure inclusions of more Nigerians and formal financial transactions and view of the reduced cost of processing. Let's take a report on that. The cashless policy was first launched in 2012 with Lagos being one of the states to implement it. The policy was thereafter extended to six other states like Abia, Anambra, Kanu, and River state. The CBN governor who was represented by his deputy in charge of financial system stability Aisha Ahmad gave an overview of the cashless policies. According to her, the directorate of the CBN is charged with the mandate to promote a safe and sound financial system and to ensure a credible and efficient payment system. In 2012, we were still talking about bank branches as the only source of access to financial services. Today, we have a very robust payment system that includes bank branches, branches of microfinance banks, POS machines, ATM machines, agent banking, eNira, and many other options. The lawmakers present requested further clarification on the cashless policy following the agitations from constituents as well as petitions against the CBN. We cannot keep printing the Nira. So as much as we have doubled down on this policy right now, we want you to tell us categorically for how long will this be. Is it going to be for three months, six months, or are you going to be doing regional like you started then? Because the way to go is cashless. Last three weeks, we went to Binangwari. There was no electricity, there was no telecom sector, and that's the next sector to make this policy successful. The banking sector because of the infrastructure and the employees, the power sector, and the telecom sector. I know that CBN is aware that there are over 1.4 million POS agents in Nigeria, and this new policy will render them jobless, and that is a major economic impact on the nation. Was this given consideration when this policy was decided? The CBN deputy governor responded to some questions on present and past policies. The citizens are not actually disenfranchised. They have options for their transactions, and they are indeed using those options today. Why do I say so? From the data that we see, in terms of the size of transactions happening in agent locations, people in the interland are actually taking advantage of this. Speaker Femi Bajabiamila, thereafter urged the CBN to be mindful of constitutional provisions of interacting with the legislature before implementing policy decisions. For now, the CBN has revealed to revise the bank's cash withdrawal limits policy, which it attributed to the feedback it got from the stakeholders. The House has adjourned its plenary to next week Wednesday to consider the 2023 budget. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.