More Nigerians Adopting E-Naira Mobile App, Nearly 1 Million Downloads

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that it is set to introduce the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code as a mode to help over 30% of Nigerians who are yet to enter the financial system .

CBN Deputy Governor Kingsley Obiora explained this during the IMF’s African Department Speaker Series held virtually on Friday.

“We have made serious progress over the past seven to eight years because when the current governor took over in 2014, one of the pillars of his vision was to significantly improve financial inclusion.

“So at the time, we were at 48% of our population in the financial system, and given several policies that he designed and implemented, we are almost at 70%.

“That still leaves us around 30% of our population out of the financial system and we believe the CBDC can help reduce that number even further.

“A lot of people may not have a smartphone, but this is basically the next step in our improvement in the CBDC, to introduce the USSD code, so those who don’t have a smartphone can still transact “, Mr. Obiora said.

As a result, the CBN Deputy Governor explained that the eNaira platform has a low barrier, making it easy for anyone with a Bank Verification Number (BVN) to log into the eNaira platform. in a few minutes.

He said the country’s digital payments have grown in value from $324 billion in 2008 to almost $2.4 trillion now and Nigerians are now used to using them.

“As you know, on the continent, we have one of the biggest Fintech companies, Futterwave, Paystack, etc.,” he said.

The CBN chose to introduce the CBDC as it offered huge benefits to Nigeria, he added.

Mr Obiora claimed a number of benefits, including increased financial inclusion, reduced cash handling costs, direct social benefits to citizens and a reduction in the informal sector.

Others include increasing tax collection, improving cross-border trade and remittances, reducing payment costs and increasing efficiency, and simply promoting economic growth in general. .

king of investors found that eNaira, being Africa’s first digital currency, rose to the top of the global retail CBDC rankings, with app downloads rising to 756,000 from 700,000 in December 2021.

Similarly, eNaira received a retail index of 95 in the survey, and the country was also ranked first in Africa. The index is based on research from the BIS, the World Bank and PwC.