As the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s cashless policy shifted to other parts of Nigeria, banks have further articulated their readiness to work with the CBN to replicate the cashless regime across the country.

Some of the banks including Sterling Bank, FCMB, Access Bank and Mainstreet Bank had demonstrated this readiness recently when they signed on iTeller, an indigenous cheque truncation application.

The current cheque truncation regime is planned to reduce the cheque clearing cycle from T+2 to T+1, while the iTeller application is presently a T+0 ready system. The system is an ultra violet cheque scanning ready solution. Cheque truncation is one of the instruments necessary for the actualisation of the cashless regime and it is just being implemented in Nigeria.

iTeller application is a suite of integrated solutions that comprises ATM based self-service cheque lodgement, cash lodgement/withdrawal and cashier’s desktop transport cheque scanning system for a state-of-the-art and an end-to-end branch level cheque truncation capability as well as a slip-free banking experience.

Recently, Nigeria InterBank Settlement Systems, NIBSS, and Nigeria’s leading financial services software provider, Precise Financial Systems, PFS, collaborated with the CBN to achieve the cheque truncation exercise across the 37 branches of the CBN in states capital in Nigeria including the federal capital territory, Abuja.

According to a statement emanating from PFS, the company behind the iTeller application, which was signed by its Managing Director, Yele Okeremi, the application provides an optimal mix of both hardware and software for capturing, through in-built scanner and processing of cheques presented by customers for lodgement.  The design concept ensures a proper handshaking with the bank’s core banking application.

“The cheque truncation is already on. The latest and most remarkable achievement is the signing on of iTeller by the CBN, the regulatory agency behind the cheque truncation policy.”