The Director of Information and Technology of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Hajiya Rakiya Mohammed, stated in a recent report that the volume of transactions of Nigeria’s digital currency, e-naira, has risen from over N4 billion to N5 billion. And its circulation has hit N401.82 million.
What they are saying
The CBN official stated that “e-naira is easy to onboard, get it, fund it, use it, anyone can be on board with it. In Nigeria, we have had several drivers for IT growth; inclusive payment is a rallying driver for the CBN.”
- She added that e-naira is helping to reduce the cost of producing cash, enabling instant payments and driving digital transformations.
Why it matters
The popularity of eNaira, Africa’s first digital currency, is improving as the CBN passes policies to guarantee inclusion in the country’s financial markets. Popularizing the usage of eNaira could amongst Nigeria 216 million populace is a possible feat as the country leads the continent in terms of crypto adoption, according to Triple A.
What you should know
According to the numbers released by Mr. Godwin Emefiele, at the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in September, not only has eNaira application recorded 905,588 downloads, the digital currency transactions have exceeded $1.49 million over N3.484 billion.
A breakdown shows: “78,115 consumer-to-bank transactions worth about N1 billion, 90,760 bank-to-customer transactions worth N945 million, 35,800 consumer-to-consumer transactions worth about N480 million, and 171,000 consumers to merchant transactions worth over N387 million.” CBN has created 13,136 wallets through the USSD channel.