Emefiele: eNaira is a monumental success… N8bn transactions recorded in a year

Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), says the value of transactions on the eNaira platform has hit $8 billion.

The eNaira platform was launched in October 2021.

Speaking on Wednesday at CBN’s in-house executive seminar in Abuja, Emefiele said the eNaira has been globally acclaimed as a success story.

According to NAN, he was represented at the event by Aishah Ahmad, CBN deputy governor in charge of financial system stability.

“Since its launch, a total of N8 billion, consisting 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 dialling ‘*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 at April (PwC, 2022) and several central banks across the globe have been requesting for our success template on the eNaira.”

Emefiele added that as part of the CBN’s digitisation drive, the apex bank had taken transformational steps in entrenching a culture of “big data” and data analytics as tools for effective policy making.

“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 per cent 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, 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.