CBN withdraws licences of BDCs, orders fresh applications

CBN on BDCs

The Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN), has announced the withdrawal of the licences of existing bureau de change operators.

In a new guidelines released by the apex bank on Wednesday, the apex bank directed the affected operators to reapply for fresh licences.

According to the new guidelines, signed by the apex bank’s Director of the Financial Policy and Regulation department, Haruna Mustafa, All existing BDCs shall re-apply for a new licence according to any of the tiers or licence category of their choice, as provided in the guidelines.

The apex bank set the application fee for Tier-1 licence at N1 million; minimum capital at N2 billion and licensing fee at N5 million. For Tier-2, application fee was pegged at N250,000, minimum capital requirement – N500 million and licensing fee – N2 million.

The revised guidelines, however, annulled the mandatory caution fees of N200 million for Tier-1 and N50 million for Tier-2 BDC operators, and forbade them from engaging in cryptocurrency assets, derivative trading, international outward transfers and accepting international inward transfers.

The CBN also gave the BDC operators six-month ultimatum to come up with the minimum capital requirements for their desired Tier effective Wednesday, date of the guidelines publication.

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