THE Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has barred some microfinance banks, including Moniepoint, Opay and Kuda, from opening new accounts and accepting new customers.
This follows allegations that they were being used to funnel cryptocurrency and manipulate the value of Nigeria’s Naira.
The decision is considered imperative in the apex bank’s effort curb money-laundering activities that have led to the Naira depreciating against the United States Dollar (USD) in recent days.
On Monday, April 29, the Naira traded at N1,350 against the dollar, a decline from its steady climb in the past few weeks, when it peaked at N950 in early April.
Moniepoint wrote in a message on its platform for intending customers on Friday, April 26: “Hello! We’ve temporarily paused new sign-ups on our platform.
“This means that you’ll be unable to open a new account at the moment. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”
Following the slide of the Naira in February, which nearly exchanged at N2,000 to a dollar, the CBN, in collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes commission (EFCC) embarked on a crack down on Binance and detained its executives- Tigran Gambaryan, a US citizen, and British-Kenyan Nadeem Anjarwalla- over allegations of Naira manipulation.
The government then demanded that Binance release the names of its top 100 users and their transactions to negotiate the release of the detained executives, including Anjarwalla, who later escaped lawful detention and fled the country.
Binance and its two executives are currently standing trial in Nigeria.
