Sophia Michaels
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has mandated that vendors providing foreign exchange (FX) amounts of $10,000 and beyond to Bureau De Change (BDC) operators must disclose the origin of the forex.
The apex bank made this known on Friday in a document titled ‘Revised Regulatory and Supervisory Guidelines for Bureau De Change Operations in Nigeria’.
CBN also mandated the sellers to “comply with all AML/CFT/CPF regulations and foreign exchange laws and regulations”.
Also, the CBN said customers can move foreign currencies from their domiciliary accounts with Nigerian banks to BDCs.
“All digital/transfer purchases of foreign currencies shall be credited to the BDC’s Nigerian domiciliary account,” CBN said.
“Payments for all digital/transfer purchases of foreign currency by a BDC shall be by transfer to the customer’s Naira account. If the customer is non-resident (whether Nigerian or not), a BDC may issue the customer a prepaid NGN card.”
The financial regulator said BDCs can source foreign currencies from tourists, returnees from the diaspora, and expatriates with foreign exchange inflows from work, travel, investment or their domiciliary accounts.
Other allowable sources mentioned by CBN are residents with foreign exchange inflows from work, travel, investment or their domiciliary accounts, and International Money Transfer Operators (IMTOs).
CBN also listed embassies, hotels that are authorised buyers of foreign currencies, the Nigerian foreign exchange market (NFEM), as well as any other source that the apex bank may specify.
