EFFECTIVE November 1,2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will begin to impose sanctions on deposit money banks (DMBs) that rejects banks’ cheques.
The apex bank stated this in a circular issued last week by its director of the Banking Services Department, Sam Okojere.
It said, “It has come to our notice that MICR rejects have been on the increase and in furtherance of the bank’s effort to reduce the number, Deposit Money Bank (DMBs) are hereby directed to contact their personalisers and reiterate the need to revalidate the MICR code-line details for correctness in accordance with the NCS and NICPAS version 2.0.
“Please note that the bank (CBN) will monitor compliance with the provision of this circular and any bank with MICR reject starting from November 1, 2023 would be penalised in accordance with the Sanction Grid.”
Simply put, MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) is a technology used mainly by the banking industry to streamline the processing and clearance of cheques, and it is the coded numbers that appear at the bottom left of the cheque.
Concerned about the MICR rejection, CBN stated that the presenting and receiving banks should thoroughly examine their in-house cheque processing equipment to ensure that they are appropriately calibrated and supervised to eliminate distortion of image and data being transmitted during the cheque truncation process.
Recall that the CBN issued the Nigerian Cheque Standards (NCS) and Nigeria Cheque Printers Accreditation Scheme (NICPAS), version 2.0 on September 18, 2018, to increase the efficiency and security of the Nigeria Clearing System.
Only recently, CBN released to the banks and other stakeholders an updated list of its accredited cheque printers and personalises it in fulfilment of its mandate to ensure efficient payment and settlement.
The list was disclosed in a circular signed by the director of Banking Services.
It said: “In furtherance of its mandate to ensure an efficient payment and settlement system, the Central Bank of Nigeria, in collaboration with the MICR Technical Implementation Committee (MITC) conducted the re-accreditation of cheque printers and cheque personalised in line with the NICPAS qualification criteria.”
The CBN regularly updates its list of accredited personalises and cheque printers to fish out those who are not meeting up to standards.
It also grants applications to a firm that meets its MICR Technical Implementation Committee standards.
The apex bank’s last update on the cheque printers and personalizes was released in May 2023 and in that circular, only four printers and personalise were accredited compared to six for the July update.
However, institutions accredited as cheque printers remained the same for both updates
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