eNaira Suffers Low Adoption, 98.5% of Wallets Remains Inactive – IMF

After one year of establishment, the Central Bank of Nigeria’s eNaira recorded low adoption, according to the International Monetary Fund.

This was contained in a recent report titled ‘Nigeria’s eNaira, one Year After’ by the IMF.

The Washington-based bank specifically stated that about 98.5 per cent of eNaira wallets downloaded after the launching are inactive.

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The report added that the average value of eNaira transactions had been N923 million weekly, representing 0.0018 per cent of the average amount of money supply, M3, in the period under review The average value per one transaction has been 60,000 naira.

“The average number of eNaira transactions since its inception amounts to about 14,000 per week—only 1.5 per cent of the number of wallets out there. It means that 98.5 per cent of wallets, for any given week, have not been used even once,” the report stated.

Nigeria’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the eNaira, was launched on 25 October 2021 in Abuja. IMF said as of end-November 2021, the total number of retail eNaira wallets amounted to about 860,000 — a figure equivalent to just 0.8 percent of Nigeria’s active bank accounts.

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“The retail wallet downloads saw a few weeks of initial surge before tapering off. More specially, it only took 25 days for the number of downloaded wallets to reach 500,000 units—but going from there to 600,000 units took another 63 days; and to 700,000 units yet another 143 days,” the paper reads.

“As of end-November 2021, the total number of retails eNaira wallets amounted to about 860,000. This is just 0.8 per cent of Nigeria’s active bank accounts.

“Merchant wallet download has reached about 100,000 in end-June, which is about one eleventh of the number of merchants with Point-of-Sales (POS) terminals—which enables credit or debit card payments.”