eNaira, a Central Bank of Nigeria digital currency launched in October 25, 2021 has risen to N4bn as disclosed by the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele at the grand finale of the eNaira Hackathon yesterday, in Abuja.
“Since the launch of this great initiative, the eNaira has reached 840,000 downloads, with about 270,000 active wallets comprising over 252,000 consumer wallets and 17,000 merchant wallets. In addition, volume and value of transactions on the platform have been remarkable, reaching above 200,000 and N4bn, respectively.” He said.
eNaira is used just like cash. The eNaira wallet is a digital storage that holds the eNaira. It is expected to enhance financial inclusion, support poverty reduction, enable direct welfare disbursement to citizens, improve availability and usability of central bank money, reduce the cost of processing cash, and reduce cost and improve efficiency of cross-border payment among others.
Ch’Edozie Okonjo, CBN Controller, Enugu branch has made it known in December 2021 that the CBN recorded over 34,000 transactions on the eNaira platform, thereby, having a total of over N188m.
This is a prove that an increase of 2,027.66 percent between December 2021 to August 2022 was made.
The CBN governor also disclosed that users can now make transactions directly from their phone via USSD code. According to him, “I’m pleased and indeed delighted to inform you all today that by next week, Nigerians both banked and unbanked will be able to open an eNaira wallet and conduct transactions by simply dialing *997# from their mobile phones.”
Dr Kingsley Obiora, the CBN Deputy Governor said that the use of cash as a means of payment is fast reducing in value, hence the reduction in the minting of currencies over the years in order to secure a cashless economy.