The number of Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs) watch-listed for fraudulent activities rose by 57.40 percent, or 5,020, to 13,766 as at end-June 2025 from the 8,746 recorded for the corresponding period of the preceding year, latest data released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showed over the weekend.
According to the Financial Stability Report (FSR) for June 2025 posted on the apex bank’s website, the number of BVNs watch-listed for fraudulent activities increased significantly in the first half of last year, rising by 45.27 percent, or 4,290, to 13,766 as at endJune 2025 from 9,476 as at end-December 2024. The report said: “The number of individuals enrolled on the BVN platform rose by 2.44 per cent to 65.95 million from 64.38 million at endDecember 2024.
A total of 335.78 million bank accounts were linked with BVN, compared with 297.28 million at the end of the preceding period. “The total number of active accounts in the banking industry rose to 317.72 million, above the 311.65 million recorded in the second half of 2024. The number of BVN watch-listed for fraudulent activities at end-June 2025 stood at 13,766.”
New Telegraph reports that in his presentation at the 34th Finance Correspondents and Business Editors’ seminar, held in Calabar, Cross River State, in May 2023, the then, Director, Payments System Management Department at the CBN, Mr. Musa Jimoh, announced, at the time, that 7,552 BVNs were put on a watch-list as a result of fraudulent transactions.
Musa, who was represented at the event, by Deputy Director, Payment Systems, Adefuye Adeyemi, disclosed that the centralisation of the BVN had enabled the apex bank to track fraudulent individuals and entities who had engaged in forgery, compromised complicity, fraudulent duplicate enrolment and any fraudulent infraction with and without monetary value. He said: “Recent data with the CBN reveal that 7,552 BVNs have been put on the watch-list.”
This means that between May 2023 and the end of June 2025, the CBN put a total of 6,214 BVNs on the watch-list. Launched on February 14, 2014 by the CBN in collaboration with the Bankers’ Committee, the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) and the German firm, Dermalog, the BVN scheme was designed to capture the biometrics of all bank customers thus allowing each bank customer to be given a unique 11-digit identity number (BVN) that can be verified across the Nigerian banking industry.
In October 2017, the CBN released a regulatory framework for BVN operations and a watch-list for the financial system. It stated that the watchlist comprises a database of bank customers identified by their BVNs, who have been involved in confirmed fraudulent activities in the country’s banking industry.
Speaking at the 2026 Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) Technical Kickoff Session held in Lagos, last Wednesday, the Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer of NIBSS, Premier Oiwoh, stated that the amount lost to digital payments fraud in the country declined by 51 per cent to N25.85 billion in 2025 from N52.26 billion in the preceding year.
He attributed the sharp decline in the amount lost to digital payment fraud in 2025 to measures put in place in by the CBN in collaboration with NIBSS and other stakeholders in the digital payments industry to tackle fraud.
