Seven milestones eNaira achieved in one year – CBN

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed seven milestones the eNaira has achieved since it was launched on October 25, 2021.

Godwin Emefiele, governor of the CBN last week, revealed that the sum of N2.1 billion has been issued to financial institutions, Three million naira has been successfully minted by the bank, about one million customers have been onboarded on the e-Naira platform and 33 banks have fully integrated and live on the platform.

Others are that over 3,305 merchants have successfully registered on the platform across the country including Shoprite, Sahad Stores, A.A. Rano fuelling stations, Fraser Suites, and November Cubes, among others, over 700,000 transactions amounting to about N8 billion have been recorded on the platform and over 2.5 million daily visits to the eNaira website.

“We celebrate the successes achieved so far by the CBN and all Nigerians, it must be acknowledged that the journey is iterative and today is just another step and not the destination,” Emefiele said.

He added that the team continues to work fastidiously to bring enhanced features and improved user experience to the eNaira. “To this end, the coverage of collaboration was enlarged in a bid to further drive adoption.”

The eNaira is a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) backed by law and issued by the CBN as a legal tender.

Read also: Naira notes redesign seen spurring electronic transactions

According to a recent Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Global Index by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Nigeria, Bahamas, China, Jamaica, Eastern Caribbean, Ukraine, Uruguay, Thailand, Sweden and the Republic of Korea are the top 10 countries leading the race in digital currency.

The Index in its second edition stated that these countries led the retail project indexes of central banks globally in the Index.

“The digital currency is expected to support the country’s target to raise the level of financial inclusion from 64 percent to 95 percent. By making the e-Naira platform part of the financial ecosystem, the CBN hopes to grow new private sector use cases to support the uptake of the CBDC,” the report states.

At a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank annual meeting, Bo Li, deputy managing director of IMF said CBDCs can improve financial inclusion through programmability.

“It can allow government agencies and private sector players to program and create smart contracts to allow targeted policy functions such as welfare payments, food stamps, and consumption coupons.

“By programming CBDCs that money can precisely target from what kind of money people can own to what kind of use the money can be utilized for food,” Li further said.