As part of its move to reshape Nigeria’s banking landscape, Sterling Bank has eliminated transfer charges for online transactions, ushering in a new era of truly free digital banking.

The policy, which is already in effect, is aimed at rewarding Nigerians who join the bank before the end of April, the bank said. At a briefing in Lagos, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer, Abubakar Suleiman, underscored the strategic nature of this decision.

“This is not an incidental event; it is a well-orchestrated initiative built on years of transformation,” Suleiman said. He highlighted three critical technological advancements that laid the groundwork for this policy. “The first one was that we wrote a code from scratch to create a call back in an application that can handle five million customers, and I think it has handled over 180 million transactions since it went live.

“The second thing we did was we did a complete migration from legacy European software to a new platform tailored for scalability and the third thing that we did was to completely implement a new environment by creating a private cloud that has far more capacity than anything we have ever needed or we think we are going to need.”

These innovations position Sterling Bank to manage up to 50 times its current customer base while ensuring seamless digital service delivery. The zero-transfer-fee policy is exclusively available on the bank’s digital platform, “OneBank.” Suleiman explained that this approach aligns with their vision of digital-first banking, reducing reliance on physical infrastructure and enhancing customer convenience.

“And if for any reason, you do have a reason to talk to us, we do have where we are now deploying AI to support customer service, but we also have channels like Cafe One, where you can walk in and get served,” the CEO noted.

Suleiman added, “We expect 99.9% of all transactions on OneBank to be self-service and digital,” emphasizing the bank’s commitment to efficiency and innovation.

Group Executive at Sterling Bank, Obinna Ukachukwu, elaborated on the rationale behind the initiative, saying: “This decision was made primarily to appreciate our existing customers who have stood by us through periods of transition.”

Ukachukwu also noted that new customers joining within this month would be categorized as part of the loyal customer base eligible for this benefit, adding, “We opened the window further to say, if you come on board within this particular period, we will categorize you as one of our existing customers.”

He said taking off the fees is not the end of it. “That is not the end at all. I know we have always known Sterling Bank as the one-customer bank, but our technology stack has historically limited us from achieving that particular one-customer goal the way we always wanted to achieve it.

“But now that we are a lot more flexible, we will increasingly see things and benefits layered on the accounts of our customers, and will increasingly see us give back even more, enabling businesses, enabling personal lives to thrive and we will be very happy if other banks adopt this strategy or this plan to give back transaction fees to customers.

“Because today, we have taken out the fees, and we still pay other institutions their portion of it. So, there is part of the cost that we still bear by ourselves. So, if everyone eliminates it, it is going to become free for the entire industry,” Ukachukwu said.