123
The African nation of Nigeria has seen a good response for its central bank digital currency (CBDC) e-Naira! Since its launch in October 2021, e-Naira has onboarded 840,000 users and is very close to hitting the 1-million milestone.
At the same time, the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Governor Godwin Emefiele has set an ambitious target of having at least 8 million users in the second phase of the CBDC development. Emefiele’s comments came on Thursday, August 18, during the finals of the hackathon sponsored by the central bank to build products and services around e-Naira.
He further added that the expansion of the e-Naira platform will further deepen its integration with the existing payment infrastructure of Nigeria. Consumers and merchants with bank accounts can use Nigeria’s existing financial payment infrastructure to transfer e-Naira. The value of e-Naira transactions on the platform has reached N4 billion.
In the second phase of expansion, the Central Bank of Nigeria will collaborate with private sector operators. Speaking on the matter, governor Emefiele said:
“Notwithstanding this appreciable progress, the second phase of the project has begun and it is intended to drive financial inclusion by onboarding unbanked and underserved users leveraging offline channels.
