Central Bank of Nigeria Moves Forward With Plans to Upgrade CBDC

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced that it will be moving ahead with its plans to upgrade the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the eNaira. This will enable the CBDC to be used on a wider variety of goods and services.

The CBDC plans to keep to strict crypto regulations that had a negative impact on Nigeria’s fintech sector.

Bariboloka Koyor, the CBN Branch Controller, spoke at a campaign to familiarize businesses with the eNaira in Lagos on May 9. At the campaign, Koyor announced that “starting next week, there is going to be an upgrade on the eNaira wallet app that will allow you to do transactions such as paying for DSTV or electric bills or even paying for flight tickets.”

Koyor also added that the eNaira will be the only way to receive financial assistance from the government which highlights the importance of early adoption.

Koyor also stated that “this is a project that the CBN rolled out to reach every Nigerian in terms of financial inclusion and in terms of efficiency, reliability and safety of banking transactions so that we can do banking transactions very easily and safely and the people in Nigeria can enjoy the benefit of the eNaira.”

Nigerians have been rushing to adopt crypto as the naira has fallen by over 209% over the past six years. According to a report by KuCoin, around 33.4 million Nigerians already own or trade cryptocurrencies.

Sadly, the country’s restrictions on crypto are extreme and many crypto users have suffered under them and two crypto traders’ accounts have even been frozen.

A report published by the Secretary Generals of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development stated that restrictions on crypto in Nigeria have negatively impacted millions who are living from the sector.