The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has stated that the eNaira application has so far recorded a total of 905,588 downloads. However, only 282,600 are currently active.
This was revealed by the governor of the CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, at Tuesday’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.
Emefiele also announced that about 13,136 wallets had been downloaded via the unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) route, which was introduced less than a month ago.
What the CBN is saying
He said, “So far, 905,588 people have downloaded the app, with 282,600 of them currently active. So far, transactions have exceeded 1.49 million worth over N3.484 billion, with the breakdown as follows: 78,115 consumer-to-bank transactions worth about N1 billion, 90,760 bank-to-customer transactions worth N945 million, 35,800 consumer-to-consumer transactions worth about N480 million, and 171,000 consumers to merchant transactions worth over N387 million.”
Emefiele also highlighted the recent success of the USSD linkage to eNaira. He said, “13,136 wallets have so far been created via the USSD channel – that was the channel we introduced about three-four weeks ago and we are happy that progress has since been made’’.
He also stated that Nigerians have increased their use of eNaira for online transactions. He added, “For e-commerce, we have seen a 9.946 percent increase between July and September, and this remains very encouraging. We believe the eNaira is an alternative to you holding an analogue naira and so it is very convenient.”
What you should know
- The apex bank recently introduced the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code for its eNaira. That means Nigerians without internet-enabled phones can use eNaira for transactions.
- The decision by the apex bank to use the USSD as the offline channel for the eNaira was based on an understanding of the unique features of our economy, taking into account the fact that, as of now, about 50% of adult Nigerians are not bank customers and are therefore not eligible for formal financial services.
- Flutterwave has stated that merchants can now accept eNaira payments from their customers on their platform. Flutterwave merchants can enable the eNaira payment option on their dashboard for their customers’ use.
