The number of active bank accounts in Nigeria rose to 133.5 million in 2021, recent data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has shown.
According to the NIBSS data, out of the active bank accounts, individual accounts represent 92% or 122.3 million, while the remaining are corporate accounts. As of the end of 2020, total active bank accounts in the country stood at 114.8 million. This means that a total of 18.7 million new bank accounts were opened in 2021.
The data also shows that the number of current accounts rose by 14% to 49.8 million in 2021 from 43.6 million in 2020.
Similarly, savings accounts rose by 7.8% to 120.4 million in 2021 from 111.7 million in 2020. Meanwhile, the number of inactive bank accounts in the country stood at 57.9 million in the year under review. From the NIBSS data, the total number of bank accounts in the country as of 2021 was 191.4 million, out of which 133.5 were actively in use. This represents an increase of 11% or 5.7 million in the number of inactive banks accounts for the year as the inactive accounts stood at 52.2 million in 2020.