The Central Bank of Nigeria is moving forward with its plans to upgrade the country’s central bank digital currency to be used on a wider range of goods and services while maintaining its harsh crypto restrictions towards the country’s fintech sector.
The CBN Branch Controller Bariboloka Koyor spoke at a campaign aiming to explain businesses to the eNaira at a market in the country’s most populous city of Lagos. Koyor said the upgrade was launched to make onboarding easier, hyping its wallet that had no charges and was faster than internet banking.
He went to add that in the future, the eNaira will be the only way to receive financial assistance from the government, highlighting the advantages of early acceptance.
The 209% drop of the naira in the past six years has pushed Nigerians to adopt crypto. In a recent report from the KuCoin crypto exchange it highlighted that around 33.4 million Nigerians owned or traded cryptocurrencies in the last six months.
Restrictions on crypto trading in the country tensed up after the launch of the eNaira in October 2021. The CBN banned banks from servicing crypto exchanges in the same year but real enforcement happened in November 2021 when the CBN ordered the accounts of two crypto traders to be frozen.
