New Nigerian ID Card Includes Prepay MasterCard Wallet

First time accepted submitter Adam Oxford writes Nigeria's National Identity Management System — which aims to bring together citizen information databases as diverse as driving licenses and tax returns — was introduced last week and includes a prepay MasterCard wallet. Civil liberties groups are naturally wary about the project, but proponents see it as a way to get financial services to the masses. From the article: "The director general of the commission which will implement NIMS, Chris 'E Onyemenam, said at the launch that the card will eventually be used for border control as well. 'There are many use cases for the card, including the potential to use it as an international travel document,' Onyemenam said. 'NIMC is focused on inclusive citizenship, more effective governance, and the creation of a cashless economy, all of which will stimulate economic growth, investment and trade.'"

Comments

Are Mastercard paying for the privilege?

[Wootery]

Are Mastercard paying for the privilege?

Excellent move for the government

[Anonymous Coward]

What simpler than to require everyone to carry a minimum positive balance lest the card is not valid? What simpler idea than for the government to help itself to said balance in case of fines?

I honestly expect this to be touted as a corruption curbing measure as well as humanitarian aid and access to financial services, and then to turn out to be effectively a modern day debt bondage tool. That is, your identity is literally worthless if there's no money on the attached "prepaid" card.

Very cunning move, Nigerian Government. Putting a Royal face on underhanded crookedness, indeed. I salute you, my dear valued friends!

Re:Excellent move for the government

[TWX]

That is, your identity is literally worthless if there's no money on the attached "prepaid" card.

Heh. Kind of like how if you want to do anything with significant amounts of money in the United States, they require that you allow them to do a credit check on you first?

Neighbors were getting solar put on their roof. We figured it wouldn't hurt to talk to the salesman since he was there. He wanted to run a credit-check on us. We laughed in his face. We'll consent to a credit check only when we're at the stage of seeking to actually borrow money, and basically that means only for the purchases of vehicles and real property, and we do it on our terms, through our bank, in advance, not on the terms of some merchant and certainly not through their financing people.

Most people here don't do that. They will go in cold, without having any sort of in-advance approved financing from a lender that they already have a relationship with, and will get screwed. Makes me wonder if this situation in Nigeria will work out the same way for the vast majority of people there, as they won't have sought in-advance to get the backing they need, and will ultimately pay more for whatever because of it.

Re:Excellent move for the government

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why would you nuke an ID with a negative balance on it?

Even assuming arbitrary malice, it's just not efficient. A debt that the debtor can't afford to pay is a debt you don't get to collect.

In legally and organizationally primitive contexts, like premodern governments or Big Vinny's extralegal lending operation, you do see unproductive means used(debtor's prisons, kneecapping, death); because there simply isn't a way of keeping a debtor on the hook otherwise. In some premodern society where you can move a few towns over and nobody's ever heard of you, playing collections agent is unrewarding. If the loan was extended off the books and doesn't legally exist, your ability to get it paid back by anything other than extralegal means is similarly curtailed.

The ideal situation, for the lender, is one where the target's earning capacity is not impaired, so they'll be able to pay as much as possible; but where they find it either impossible or undesirable to just walk away from the situation. In the case of debt peonage, the debtors are usually at approximately slave levels of human capital investment anyway, so punitive measures don't reduce their(already miserable) earning capacity much; but in almost all cases of better qualified debtors, you really want to touch them as little as possible; but make it impossible to walk away from the debt.

A nice, functional, modern bureaucracy is perfect for that. Without a valid ID that correlates to a suitable history of references, educational credentials, clean criminal record, etc. your life gets a hell of a lot more difficult, and probably poorer, even if you can evade any formal state action against impersonation/non-documented-persons. This provides a considerable incentive to remain at the table; and makes it relatively hard to escape your past. Why shove somebody who owes you money out of that place(where they can still hold a job and make payments, and have a lot to lose if they try to fake their own death or something) and into the underground economy, where they'll probably earn next to nothing and have much less interaction with formalized institutions?

The ability to keep tabs on people across time and place, without necessarily imprisoning or killing them, is about the biggest advance in history for anyone looking to profit from credit.

Re:Excellent move for the government

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As best I can tell, 'credit check' either has, or is rapidly, mutating into a polite euphemism for 'background check with slight additional emphasis on personal finances'.

It's one thing that somebody might want a credit check if they are loaning me money; but anyone who won't STFU about it(or does; but then runs one anyway) if you offer to pay in cash or a suitably-blessed transfer from a reputable bank is either running directly from a script or interested in something other than credit-worthiness.

Oh hello, submitter and author of original article

[Anonymous Coward]

This appears to be a trend on /. recently: Plugging your own writing, often no more than polished blogs, published on some web-rag. Not that much a problem if you both have something to say and don't over-use the plugging. If either, or increasingly, both aren't true, then it gets grating. Even worse if the website is unreadable due to incessant reinventing of the wheel, badly, using gobs and gobs of javascript where a little html3 would have done Just Fine. But even if that's all sorted, it still would be courteous to admit your affiliations.

Re:419

[ShanghaiBill]

While the "419 scam" is associated with Nigeria, many of the scammers are not actually Nigerian. The Economist published an article about why. For the scammers, a major cost is leads that turn out to not be credulous enough to actually send money. So many non-Nigerian scammers claim to be Nigerian, figuring that Nigeria's reputation for corruption and crime will weed out all but the stupidest respondents.

This CC/ID should help with the corruption and crime. It is easy for a corrupt official to take a bribe in cash, but much harder with a CC. Likewise, a thief wants to steal cash, not a pre-paid CC without knowing the PIN. It will also make collecting taxes easier. In poor countries, pervasive tax evasion means not enough money for infrastructure, or to pay sufficient salaries to government employees so that they work for their salary rather the opportunity to extort bribes. A broader tax base will also pull more people into the formal economy, rather than low productivity work in subsistence farming or running small street stalls.

Bank account in Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden you atomaticly get an account a a bank when you have a SSN, paid taxes. Think you get it in Nordea issued by the goverment. They are 100% free by law. So Nigerian goverment have parted with MasterCard, and this is a story?

"and the creation of a cashless economy, "

[triso]

Nigeria already hes a cashless economy Nobody has any money.