‘589k wallets, GTB leads adoption’ — how eNaira performed in its first month

In October, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) unveiled the very first Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in Africa with a lot of national and international interest on how well the electronic currency will perform and what problems it would solve in the banking and finance space on the continent.

TheCable brings you some quick numbers which give insight into how well the eNaira has performed since its launch at the end of October 2021.

Total Downloads: As of November 29, 2021, about a month after eNaira went live, 589,000 downloads had been recorded for the digital currency across the iOS and Android app stores. That translates to an average of 20,000 downloads per day since launch.

Android is King: Of the 589,000 downloads, 461,000 have been from the Android side of the market, while iOS downloads stand at only 128,000 downloads. Most of the downloads on both platforms happened in the first few days after the currency went live.

Total Activated Wallets: The magic number is 114,900. As of November 29, 2021, there were at least 114,900 activated wallets. These wallets are broken down into two type: consumer wallets and merchant wallets. Consumer wallets stood at about 112,870 activated wallets. Merchant wallets were just a little over 2,000 wallets.

GTB in the lead: A majority of the consumer wallets activated have been activated by users from the top 10 financial institutions in the country. Of these bunch, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) is in the lead — and by a mile. As far as consumer wallets go, GTB has more than 30 percent of the total activated consumer wallets held by all banks in Nigeria.

Access Bank, Zenith Bank, First Bank, UBA, Polaris Bank, and Ecobank make up the top seven banks with the highest number of activated consumer wallets. Union Bank, Stanbic

Ecobank leads merchant adoption: More than 2,000 merchant wallets were active at the end of November 2021, and about 20 percent were domiciled with Ecobank.

Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Union Bank, First Bank, UBA, and Polaris Bank make up the top seven in merchant adoption. Keystone Bank, GTB, and Wema Bank complete the top 10 banks — in this order.

Total Transactions: A total of about 37,810 transactions were carried out using eNaira, bringing the total value of transactions to about N208.91 million in a little over a month after activation began. As of November 29, 2021, the stock of eNaira in circulation stood at N62.46 million.

The eNaira went live on October 25, 2021, after initial delays due to the country’s independence anniversary celebration. Both merchant wallets and consumer wallets went live on the same day, but as expected, more consumer wallets have been activated.

With over 500,000 downloads in the first month and 114,900 active wallets trading via the platform, the CBN, Payment Service Banks (PSBs), and other financial institutions are expecting to see more adoption in 2022.