CBN outlines timeline for digital currency initiative

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with its stakeholders has outlined its digital currency initiative via a private webinar held on Thursday, July 22^nd.

It would be recalled that the governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele, had earlier announced that the apex bank would be working on a central bank digital currency at the 306th Banker’s Committee meeting.

According to private sources, the pilot scheme will be launched on October 1st, 2021.

The press briefing delivered by the Director IT department, Rakiya Mohammed, at the end of the meeting further explained that the Bank had been conducting research in regards to central bank digital currencies since 2017 and may conduct a proof of concept before the end of this year.

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The project name is tagged Project GIANT and it will use the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain.

Nigeria’s central bank further revealed that the importance of eNaira includes Macro management and growth, cross border trade facilitation, financial inclusion, monetary policy effectiveness, improved payment efficiency, revenue tax collection, remittance improvement, and targeted social intervention.

The Nigerian Apex Bank also underlined the benefits for the fintech ecosystem that include enhanced operational efficiency, opportunities for fintech start-ups in building services/products like financial inclusion that will contribute to the economic growth, and the creation of a new system complimenting the traditional payment system.