Nigeria’s Central Bank Wants Financial Institutions to Create CBDC-Based Products

The Central Bank of Nigeria has stated that it wants firms in the country’s payment sector to create and help launch products based on the e-naira, the central bank’s digital currency.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has invited payment service providers, financial institutions, and fintech businesses to create and offer products based on the e-naira in order to increase its acceptance.

According to the Vanguard, Rakiya Mohammed, the CBN’s director of information technology, made this request when she met financial institutions and fintech startups during the central bank’s one-day engagement session.

During this discussion, Mohammed is said to have reassured participants that the central bank is not competing with financial institutions or other payment system participants. Instead, Mohammed stated that the CBN is open to proposals or initiatives that increase the value of the e-naira or enhance the user experience.

Furthermore, Mohammed is said to have urged the country’s payment service providers to come up with more creative ways to assist members of the public with the onboarding process. She also encouraged service providers to provide solutions that enable offline e-naira functions, such as cards, wearables, and USSD, among other things.

Meanwhile, claims that the CBN is urging players in Nigeria’s payment sector to endorse the CBDC come as another magazine quotes the bank’s anti-cryptocurrency governor, Godwin Emefiele, as saying that more individuals are downloading the e-naira wallet program. Since the CBDC’s inception over a month ago, about 600,000 wallet applications for the digital currency have been downloaded, according to him.

However, Emefiele, like the bank’s information technology director, believes that financial industry participation would be vital if the CBN is to meet its aim of hastening the adoption of the e-naira by Nigerians without cellphones.

Patrick

Coincu News