Nigeria’s central bank believes its digital currency, the eNaira, has scored wins in the ten months since it was launched last October.
NewsBeatng reports that the app has been downloaded 840,000 times, nearly a third of those converting to active wallets.
” 17,000 of the active wallets belong to merchants who have ostensibly used the currency to receive a payment.
” Transaction volume and value have been “remarkable” at 200,000 and 4.4 billion naira ($10 million) respectively”, said Godwin Emefiele, the Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, at a competition designed to increase use cases for the currency.
But, the news should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism as at an average of 1.35 transactions per active wallet, the eNaira has not convinced its users to do a lot with it.
At N22,000 ($52), the currency’s average transaction value is way behind the regular naira: in 2021, Nigeria’s financial sector processed electronic payments at an average of N720,000 ($1,700) per transaction (pdf)
The central bank’s announcement suggests it has made some progress in promoting the eNaira given a tortured first week in which the app was temporarily deleted from Google’s app store.
Still, public reception remains muted as the eNaira continues its struggle for relevance with most Nigerians.
It is still a long, bumpy road to theoretically add $29 billion to Nigeria’s GDP over the next 10 years, as president Muhammadu Buhari expects the eNaira to do.
