Since its introduction in October 2021, at least 114,900 consumers and merchants have activated the eNaira wallets as of November 29, 2021.
A breakdown revealed that consumer wallets account for approximately 112,870 of the activated wallets, while merchant wallets account for just over 2,000 wallets.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced the eNaira, Africa’s first Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), in October. It is the electronic version of the Naira, the country’s currency.
The launch of the digital Naira, which was intended to serve approximately 200 million people in Nigeria, piqued the interest of national and international observers, who wanted to know how well the electronic currency would perform and what problems it would solve in the continent’s banking and finance sectors.
The app was removed from the Google Play Store about 24 hours after it was released due to some glitches, but it was restored a few hours later after the issues were resolved.
On November 29, 2021, the app had 589,000 downloads on both the Android and iOS app stores, with the former accounting for 461,000 downloads and the latter accounting for 128,000 downloads.
Analysis showed that Ecobank and GTBank are currently leading in customers’ adoption of the eNaira, with over 2,000 merchant wallets active, about 20 per cent are domiciled with Ecobank, while GTBank has the majority of the consumer wallets activated by users amongst the top 10 financial institutions in the country.
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