Africa’s biggest financial technology company, Flutterwave has enlisted Nigeria’s digital currency, eNaira, on its platform. This partnership provides merchants with the opportunity to accept eNaira payments. eNaira is an additional payment option to the already existing payment methods including cards, bank transfer, Barter by Flutterwave etc.
Why it matters
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is working to increase the popularity and usage of the electronic currency in Nigeria and all over Africa. To this end, Nigeria’s apex bank introduced the Unstructured Supplementary (USSD) code to encourage Nigerians without smartphones to transact the digital currency, eNaira, on the designated platform.
- CBN is banking on the country’s 81 million adults using mobile phones, and 150 million mobile subscribers to transact with the digital currency.
- The adoption of eNaira by Remita, Africa’s leading payment platforms boosts the CBN’s course.
By the numbers
Since the launch of the currency in October 2021, eNaira, Africa’s first digital currency has registered 840,000 downloads and N4 billion transactions across the 270,000 active wallets consisting of 252,000 consumer wallets and 17,000 merchant wallets.
What you should know
eNaira is Africa’s first digital currency issued and regulated by the CBN. eNaira can be used as a medium of financial exchange (just like cash) and also as a store of value.
The currency is available to users with or without a bank account. Users only need to register and access their wallet via the eNaira mobile app. Flutterwave is a leading financial service provider in Africa with a valuation of $3 billion.