Enrollments for the Bank Verification Number, BVN, by Nigerian bank account owners increased to 62.7 million this July up from 61.87 million in May 2024.

Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, NIBSS, disclosed this in its latest BVN data.

Accordingly, the report showed that a total of 854,267 account owners have registered for the BVN in the last two months.

As of December 2023, the total registered BVN stood at 60 million. This suggests that the database has grown by 2.7 million so far this year.

The increase in registration for the BVN is attributable to the December 2023 directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which ordered all banks to freeze any account not linked with BVN by April 2024.

Part of the directive also required all commercial, merchant, non-interest, payment service banks, other financial institutions, and mobile money operators, to mandate the BVN or National Identification Number, NIN for all accounts and wallets

However, the number of active bank accounts in Nigeria stood at 219.6 million in March 2024