PoS Surcharge: Operators alledge bank officials are selling notes to them

The operators also appealed to the Central Bank of Nigeria to sanction these banks.

Some Point of Sale (PoS) operators have accused officials of the commercial banks of selling naira notes to them at an exorbitant price, hence the reason behind the upsurge in withdrawal rates.

These operators disclosed this while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday.

According to them, the hike in prices of PoS withdrawal is as a result of the exorbitant prices they pay to get these notes from the banks.

One of them said: “I pay very high amount to get this money that I am giving to customers. If you look around here, other operators did not open.

“The woman (bank official) that I collect money from even increased the money today because she said that cash is scarce and she kept it for me because I called her earlier to do so.

“I pay according to the amount I collect. Sometimes, I pay as high as N5,000 for N50,000 to N70,000 that I collect from her.

“I charge N500 for every N5,000 withdrawn and N1000 for every N10000 withdrawn for me to recover what I spent to collect the money.”

Miss Nnedi Ikonye, another operator also said: “I was asked to pay N3,000 for the N65,000 that I withdrew from a bank and that is because I know someone in that bank.

“That is just a token compared to what my colleagues are paying. They pay more because they don’t know people in the bank,” she concluded.

Another operator, Mr Alphonsus Idah besieged the CBN to sanction banks to combat the untold hardship faced by citizens.

“My anger in all this is that the CBN might be aware but has refused to sanction banks.

“When they start their sanction from one bank, others will take corrections and all these will stop.

“I commend CBN for the policy of paying cash in the banking hall now. This will help too.”
Some even accused bank officials of withdrawing monies for their clients in ATMs, while customers find it hard to get cash.

“In some banks, ATM will not work even though they are loaded with cash.

”During close of work, the bankers will turn the machine on and queue to withdraw from the machine.

“The annoying thing is that one banker can hold like 10 different ATM cards and will withdraw from all of them.

“This is frustrating,” another operator said.