New Nigerian ID Card Includes Prepay MasterCard Wallet 62
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.'"
Are Mastercard paying for the privilege? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are Mastercard paying for the privilege?
Bank account in Sweden (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Excellent move for the government (Score:5, Interesting)
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.