You might remember President Muhammadu Buhari unveiled the eNaira on October 25, 2021.
Hajiya Rakiyat Mohammed, the Bank's Director of Information Technology, made the news on Monday at the Presentation and Onboarding of the e-Naira session at the Second Africa Payment Systems Conference in Abuja.
Mohammed, who was represented by Abayomi Oyeleke, the CBN's deputy director of information technology, claimed that Nigerians who invest in the eNaira platform will enjoy a number of advantages, including the ability to conduct transactions in real time using a secure digital wallet that will never go offline.
She went on to say that the eNaira was developed so that more Nigerians could use digital payment systems, which might hasten monetary exchanges between governments, between people, and between enterprises, as well as remittances from abroad and other forms of capital mobility.
Mohammed claims that the introduction of eNaira changed the business environment, reduced the usage of cash, eliminated the risks associated with cash transactions, and increased the range of digital financial services accessible to bank customers.
According to Mohammed, the eNaira opened up new business opportunities and increased access to financial services for previously unbanked Nigerians, allowing the nation's sizable young unemployment rate to benefit from the eNaira's success.
She stated that the eNaira platform would soon be expanded to include other financial services.
Mohammed said that multiple degrees of protection and transaction limits have been purposefully put in place to prevent unauthorised access to eNaira customers' wallets.
“Since its launch, a total of N8 billion, consisting of over 700,000 transactions, has passed through the eNaira platform.
“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”, she said.