Pages: (1-14 )
Abstract
Most citizens all over the world wish to live in a utopian society of sameness that would be less stressful. Ideally there would be no poverty, no unemployment, no upper, middle, or lower class. Everyone would have health-care, a home, enough to eat, and the same education. There would be no competition, no struggle for jobs, and no personal choices. Everything would be decided for each and every individual within the Utopian society. Though, no complete utopia society exist in the world, developed countries are more close to achieving the utopia dream of their citizens compared to developing countries like Nigeria. The inability of Nigeria to satisfy most of the utopia dreams of her citizens is attributed to economic, social and political mal-administration, which are the by-products of gross embezzlement and corruption that has affected development in all facets of the society. To improve the economic well-being of Nigeria citizens, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), introduced the Cashless economy policy to address a lot of issues affecting the financial system; from trying to check money Laundry and illicit activity, inflation and cost of maintaining an economy predominately cash base. A cashless economy is an economy where all means of payments are carried out without the use of physical cash. Payments will range from a list of options such as cheques, wire transfers, debit and credit cards, online transactions, and mobile banking. In this paper, we explore the role of information and Communication Technology (ICT) towards cashless transactions and opportunity provided by these cashless transactions in poverty alleviation especially as it will help a great deal to mitigate, checkmate and potentially eliminate corruption.
Keywords: Cashless, CBN, ICT, Poverty, Utopia.,