I was recently reviewing a CBN report on Cashless Nigeria and it is scary to know that 65% of Cash in Circulation is outside the banking system. I guess everything the CBN can do to cajole those who have ecstasy at the sight of cash wouldn’t work. Time we did it differently. What will happen if the CBN changes the Naira design with 1 year for everyone to comply or the Ghana-must-go of cash becomes an anthropological artifact? The whole cash would have to come to the banks to be changed, isn’t it?
What if the CBN puts a cap on the amount you can get back as cash but the rest has to be paid into some accounts, even if it is a mobile wallet? What if there is no penalty for pay in but there is for cash out?
We have done even crazier things in Nigeria and we can pull this off. The whole Cashless stuff is kind of tiring when you consider the efforts guys have put in but then nobody said it’s gonna be easy. The rest of the country is going to be on Cashless in few months and I hope we can drag them kicking and screaming into the new dispensation.
