The West African Committee for the Organization and Standardization of Banking and Finance
(CONOBAFI) met Thursday, banks and companies of the place of Abidjan to present them the
new standards for bills of exchange and promissory notes developed by the Br negotiable instruments.
This meeting, chaired by the National Director of the Central Bank of African States
of the West (BCEAO), Chalouho Coulibaly, was the occasion to invite banks to produce specimens
effects complying with standards and participating in tests in a generalized environment made available
from 16 December 2019 to 14 February 2020.
In 2016, the CONOBAFI Executive Board instructed the Executive Secretariat to reform the effects of
commerce in order to secure the media and automate their processing in the SICA-UEMOA
system (Convention on the Interbank and Automated Clearing System in waeMU).
CONOBAFI, through the National Committee for the Standardization of Negotiable Bills, has proposed projects
standards that have been validated by its Executive Board. The new effects differ from the previous ones
by specifying the technical aspects, namely dimensions, paper quality, colours, characters and
number of zones (addition of a line of printed and encoded magnetic characters with 7 CMC7 sticks).
This information and communication campaign aims to popularize these standards before their entry into force
provided for by instruction of the Governor of the BCEAO, states a press release of CONOBAFI
transmitted to the AIP.