By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
The Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele on Tuesday disclosed that the eNaira recorded over 700,000 transactions worth N8bn after one year of its launch.
Emefiele who disclosed this at the first anniversary of the eNaira launch in Lagos said over 3,305 merchants have successfully registered on the eNaira platform across the country including Shoprite, Sahad Stores, A.A. Rano fuelling stations, Fraser Suites, November Cubes, among others.
Nigeria became the first African country to introduce a digital currency, following the launch of the Central Bank of Nigeria eNaira initiative by President Muhammadu Buhari in October last year.
With the launch, Nigeria joined the Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank to become the first jurisdictions in the world to roll out national digital currencies.
The eNaira is expected to enhance financial inclusion, support poverty reduction, enable direct welfare disbursement to citizens, support a resilient payments ecosystem, improve the availability and usability of central bank money, facilitate diaspora remittances, reduce the cost of processing cash, and reduce cost and improve efficiency of cross-border payment among others.
Other milestones achievement of the eNaira showed that 33 banks have fully integrated it on their platform, while N3bn has been successfully minted by the Central Bank, and N2.10bn has been issued to financial institutions.
Emefiele added that there are over 2.5 million daily visits to the eNaira website.
He said, “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.
“Therefore, 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.”
Just like most digital revolutions, he said the eNaira is a journey that started five years ago, noting that it is not a one-off event.
Emefiele said the Bank will continue to refine, fine-tune and upgrade, adding that Nigerians should expect to see additional functionalities in the coming months, including, onboarding of revenue collection agencies to increase and simplify collections.