The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Godwin Emefiele, said eNaira has recorded 700,000 transactions valued at N8 billion.
The eNaira platform was launched and was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari on October 25, 2021.
Emefiele said the eNaira has been globally acclaimed as a success story.
He said this on Wednesday in Abuja, at the 28th edition of the apex bank’s annual In-house Executive Seminar with the theme, ‘Digitalisation of Money and Monetary Policy in Nigeria’.
Emefiele was represented by the Deputy Governor of CBN, Aishah Ahmad, who is also in charge of financial system stability.
“Since its launch, a total of N8 billion, consisting of over 700,000 transactions has passed through the eNaira platform,” he was quoted as saying.
“As part of the CBN’s effort to further integrate and broaden the usage of the eNaira, it was assigned an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code, enabling payments by simply dialing ‘*997#’ on a mobile phone.
“I am proud to announce to you today that the eNaira has been attracting accolades across the globe as a monumental success.
“It topped the charts on retail CBDCs projects globally, as of April (PwC, 2022) and several central banks across the globe have been requesting our success template on the eNaira.”
Emefiele added that as part of the CBN’s digitization drive, the apex bank had taken transformational steps in entrenching a culture of “big data” and data analytics as tools for effective policymaking.
“To this end, the CBN Data Architecture Project (CeDAP), code-named “Project OXYGEN” was commissioned, with the objectives of providing a repository of a variety of data from different sources,” he said.
The CBN governor said considerable gains have been achieved in boosting financial inclusion in Nigeria.
“While cash-based transactions have declined significantly in the last decade, it is still the dominant means of payment, amidst a large informal sector,” Emefiele said.
“Nigeria boasts of one of the fastest growing FinTech ecosystems in Africa, with the industry projected to grow by 12 percent annually.
“But the technological space is still maturing, with limited market size, funding and venture capitalists, access to baseline technologies, and skills, as common features.”
Also speaking at the event, Kingsley Obiora, deputy governor, of economic policy, CBN, said the eNaira platform has so far recorded 927,000 downloads, and 317,560 activated consumer wallets with 33 banks fully integrated and live on the platform.
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