Nigerians in Diaspora can now get their BVN

Posted by Felix Okoli on Wednesday August 26, 2015 at 11:47:4:

If you are a Nigerian with bank account in Nigeria, you no longer need to travel all the way back to Nigeria just to get your Bank Verification Number as the Central Bank of Nigeria has now made it possible for you to do so from abroad.

CBN seems to have setup bank agents and partners in some popular foreign countries where Nigerians are resident in so that they can walk in and do their normal BVN which normally requires that the person visit a location physically.

Cities that are currently supported includes London, Atlanta, Dubai, Leicester, New Delhi, Washington DC, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Guangzhou, New York, Beijing and Houston. Other locations would gradually be included based on the demand of Nigerians living there and I guess, it has to be a reasonable number of people.

What the Nigerian has to do is to simply visit the location where the facilities have been made available, fill forms and submit themselves for biometric capturing which includes finger prints and a face photo.

According to the CBN, there are 2 ways through which Nigerians living abroad can get registered and the first is through Nigerians Banks with presence in that country and the other is through a Consultant.

To register through banks in your area, just visit an offshore Nigerian bank there and register. A BVN will later be provided toe the person after which he/she can forward it to their bank in Nigeria through an online platform.

When registering through a Consultant, a company named Online Integrated Solutions(OIS) has been appointed to take care of that for a fee of about GBP 30. OIS will capture details about the customer and forward the BVN generated to the customer and the Nigerian bank within 48 hrs.

The bank verification exercise which was originally slated to end on June 30 has been further extended to around October 2015 so that many others might be able to register.