After three months since its launch, Africa’s first digital currency, eNaira, has recorded less than 10% in P2P transactions. This was disclosed by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele at the first MPC meeting of 2022.
An increase in P2P transactions is indicative of increased use of the eNiara amongst citizens for their daily transactions. However, the CBN governor disclosed that the Person to Bank and Bank to Person constitute 90% eNaira transactions.
This shows that users of eNaira transact more with banks than which each other, as Person to Person (P2P); or Person to Merchant (P2M) accounted for the remaining 10% of the eNaira ttransactions.
The apex bank governor stated that the eNaira has witnessed gradual adoption, “Since its launch about three months ago, Nigerians have continued to gradually adopt eNaira as a fast and reliable means of exchange.”
He stated that the eNaira transactions recorded range from P2P, that is, Person to Person; or Person to Merchant, P2M; Bank to Person; Person to Bank and Bank to Merchants and Merchants to Bank.
“The Person to Bank and Bank to Person constitute 90% of what we see in the market, and as you will observe, we spent the last three months observing and monitoring the system and addressing issues mostly around initial onboarding,” he added.
The governor of the apex bank stated that the eNaira’s current rollout was meant of the banked Nigerians. He added that the inclusion of the BVN as a requirement is to prevent fraudsters from hacking into the system.
He said, “We feel that you must have a BVN and you must have an account to be able to access it, and we also find that this has created some kind of constraints on people about onboarding with BVN and the rest of them. But again, we believe that what we do by the use of the BVN is the best so as to avoid fraudsters from hacking into the system.
“Most of the complaints received were mainly around the inability of prospective users to onboard and activate the e-wallet due to a mismatch of BVN enrollment records.”