Good day to you all in the LeoFinance community.
I don't know what else to say about the banking system of my country, Nigeria. At times I thought money used to be safe when saved in the bank. But nowadays I am not getting it right. Because the bank itself that should keep our funds free from theft is the theft itself.
I read a news update where the central bank of Nigeria had to recover a huge amount of money, billions of naira to be precise, and millions of dollars from illegal deductions and failed transactions.
I don’t blame people when they decide not to keep money in the bank and even prefer to keep them under the ground to rot or even in some boxes and store them in warehouses.. they must have felt that was the only way to avoid several unnecessary deductions.
Doing some rough calculations, for example, a bank has 10 million customers nationwide, then it decided to deduct some amount from their account without their consent since they are their customers. They deducted as little as 1 naira from every customer’s account a day. That would amount to approximately 10 million naira. Meanwhile, not the actual amount they deduct.
Now and then they come up with new policies and regulations. Yet the banking system never got stable as people still make bitter complaints.
There was a time when I even got a negative figure in my bank account. I was so surprised, I decided to leave the account dormant for some months to see what would happen, probably when I start using it again then they might not get to deduct those unnecessary charges from it. when I log in, I realize my account already has a minus. So they have been deducting those charges then whenever any funds mistakenly get into the account then the charges would be automatically deducted.
The reason why I save in crypto and spend in naira.
Ever since I encountered cryptocurrency and got some knowledge about cryptocurrency I realized that that is just a better way out, not the best, because a single mistake could cost you all. But a better option for those banks. I prefer holding my funds in crypto assets or even making investments with crypto tokens, then whenever I need fiat I get to trade the little amount I need and then leave the rest in my wallet.
I am safe from unnecessary deductions and the so-called interest they add to my money. If there could be other alternatives to spending fiat currency then I will go for it. If crypto were to be accepted as a medium of exchange that life would have been easier. Banks have been a rope on my neck these days.
Some recent deductions
There was a time when I was always confident about making transactions and sending and receiving money without fear, and that was because I didn't get unnecessary amounts to be removed from my account. But nowadays I just keep receiving different debit alerts after any transaction made, be it my account was credited or debited, I will still get debited.
Today I made a transfer of 800 to someone, then I got the alert of the transfer. That should have been all, but not to keep receiving other notifications of transactions I never made. Some amount was deducted for transfer commission, another amount was deducted for Vat of transfer, and another amount was deducted for electronic money transfer levy.
This is how they keep deducting and deducting from my bank account for any transfer I make. Imagine deducting this from over 4 million users.
A deduction I had to pay the price for.
A few months ago I wanted to order something from an online store. My account was empty so I had to make a cash deposit to my account using the point-of-sale POS store. After making the deposit I paid the charges, then it was time for me to make the order. I already picked all the items in the cart, I got to the payment page, I wanted to use my card, then I input all the details. After that, all it displayed was an error and insufficient balance.
After several trials, I had to check my bank app. The money I deposited completely had been deducted. The amount deducted wasn't much. Just about some cents but without it there is no way I can get to complete the order. It became a failed order until I got someone to help me credit my account before it became successful. If it were something limited, that's how I would lose my chance.
Conclusion
My experience using commercial banks has been so horrible and I can keep on listing a lot more, is it the queue we have to make to be able to access the counter or customer services or the one at the ATM stand? A lot of times when you want to withdraw and get the disappointment of dispense errors, no cash, and out of service. Hopefully, with time I might still get to use them if they improve and stop all these unnecessary deductions.
Image 1 from Screenshot from Guardian news page on my browser
Image 2 from Pixabay
Other images are screenshots from my bank app.
