Emefiele: CBN will roll out USSD code for eNaira next week 

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it will roll out the unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) code for eNaira next week.

Godwin Emefiele, CBN governor, said this on Thursday at the eNaira hackathon organised by the Africa Fintech Foundry (AFF) and the apex bank in Abuja.

Emefiele said CBN had concluded the first phase of the eNaira focusing on banks to users and progressed to the second phase of financial inclusion.

He said digital currency recorded a significant level of achievement in the first phase. 

For the second phase, the CBN governor further said the eNaira wallet would be made available to the general public by next week simply by dialling USSD code *997#.

“To achieve this set of objectives of the eNaira, the project adopted a phased approach with the first phase focusing on banks to users, while the policy objective of the second phase borders around financial inclusion,” he said.

“The second phase of the project has started, and it is intended to drive financial inclusion by onboarding the unbanked and on the soft users leveraging offline channels. 

“Phase two is expected to deliver more gains with a target of about 8 million active users based on estimations using the diffusion of innovation model. Accordingly, we promised to increase the level of financial inclusion in the country because, just like the naira, the eNaira is expected to be accessible to all Nigerians, and I would provide more possibilities to bring the unbanked into the digital economy. 

“I am pleased and delighted to inform you all today that by next week, Nigerians, both banked and unbanked, will be able to open an eNaira wallet and conduct transactions by simply dialling *997# from their mobile phones.”

“Shortly after this, both merchants and consumers with bank accounts can use the NIBSS instant payment (NIP) to transfer and receive eNaira to any bank account of their choice. This will further deepen the integration of the naira with the assist in national payments infrastructure.”

In June, CBN said the introduction of the USSD code will improve the adoption of the eNaira.