Have you been bothered about the safety and privacy of your personal information when you want to register your MTN SIM, upgrade your SIM, port your mobile number or when you want to link your NIN to your MTN line? Your days of worry are over as the Virtual NIN (vNIN) is here to ease that worry.
This “Virtual NIN” is a temporary version of your actual NIN that a third party verifying the number cannot keep and use in a way that compromises your data privacy. The Nigerian Federal Government introduced the vNIN to protect the security of Nigerians’ personal identifiable information during verification exercises and to reduce the illegal retrieval, usage, and storage of NIN.
The vNIN is a 16-digit alphanumeric virtual NIN which can only be used once. You can use the Virtual NIN when digitally verifying your identity, and the best part is that the vNIN expires 72 hours after being generated. SIM-related activities such as SIM registration, NIN linkage, SIM replacement, mobile number portability, and SIM upgrades are all possible with the Virtual NIN.
You might be wondering how you can get the vNIN for your MTN SIM. Before you can generate a vNIN, you need an MTN Enterprise ID, which is:
Enterprise Name: MTN NIGERIA
Enterprise Short-ID: 109071.
You can generate the vNIN via the NIMC mobile App. Simply download the NIMC app on Google play store or App Store, select the “Get Virtual NIN” on the “Home” screen, click on the “+” button on the bottom right corner of the screen, enter your NIN and the MTN Enterprise ID to generate your vNIN. Once the vNIN is generated, you can provide it to the MTN Agent for any selected SIM service.
The vNIN can also be created using USSD. To generate your vNIN, dial *346# or *785#, enter your NIN as well as the MTN Enterprise ID, or dial *346*3*11-Digit-NIN*MTN Enterprise ID#. An SMS message will be sent to you containing the Virtual NIN.
Your NIN is still required to generate the Virtual NIN and can only be used for one SIM-related transaction. The best part is that the generated Virtual NIN tokens are merchant-specific. This means that an MTN token cannot be used or verified by Airtel, Glo, or any other merchant.
