In order to increase electronic banking transactions in the nation, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced on Thursday, August 18, 2022 that it had reduced the minting of the naira.
Dr. Kingsley Obiora, the CBN’s deputy governor and director of economic policy, made this statement on Thursday in Abuja at the grand finale of the eNaira Hackathon.
With the goal of making the eNaira the pinnacle of digital financial services and the entry point to the digital economy, the hackathon is an initiative that fosters a collaborative atmosphere for specialists with a wide range of abilities.
It aims to provide solutions that would promote financial inclusion, SME development, and start-ups; ease cross-border trades and transfers as well as global remittances and foreign exchanges; effectively carry out welfare-oriented government initiatives; and improve interbank market efficiency.
The purpose of Thursday’s event was to strengthen the connection between eNaira and Fintechs by engaging key stakeholders in the financial technology sector.
Speaking at the occasion, Obiora said that a number of the world’s leading economies have begun to reduce the usage of cash in commercial transactions.
He claimed that whilst only 30% of individuals in the Philippines still use cash as a medium of exchange, 77% of South Koreans no longer make payments in cash.
According to Obiora, the decline in cash transactions in Nigeria has sparked a boom in electronic commerce.The deputy governor of the CBN stated specifically that e-business value had increased from N393 billion in 2014 to approximately N2.4 trillion at present.
He said, “In South Korea, 77 percent no longer use cash to do payment, while in the Philippines it is 30 percent. In Nigeria too, we are also seeing the same decline in the use of cash, the minting of currencies in the CBN has been reducing in the last couple of years.
“So, alongside this reduction in the use of cash has also been an explosion in electronic business and e-business and we have seen the value of e-business grow from N393 billion in 2014 to about N2.4 trillion now.
“And so, if you look at this movement, you will realise that the central banks in the world are responding to yearnings of citizens which is why citizens in 96 percent of central banks in the world are either working on digital currencies or they have done so already.”
