Nigeria to go cashless by 2025, CBN predicts

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said the use of cash will naturally slow by 2025 as Nigeria aspires to have a cashless and efficient electronic payment system infrastructure that facilitates financial services in all the sectors of the economy.

In its Payments Vision 2025 document, the CBN noted that it intended to provide secured, reliable, and user-centric financial solutions in compliance with international standards.

According to the CBN document obtained from its website, the Nigerian payment landscape has many options that have displaced cash in recent times, including electronic bill payment, mobile phone top up, and mobile and instant payments.

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“The use of cash will naturally slow with the ‘mobile first generation’, which will be economically active by 2025, hence one of the focuses of the PSV 2025 is enhancing the cashless policy of the CBN”, the document stated.

The CBN on October 26, 2022 announced that higher denominations of the naira- N200, N500 and N1,000 notes would be redesigned and introduced into the economy from December 15, 2022 while commercial banks were directed to return existing denominations to the CBN.

The new naira became a legal tender on December 15, 2022, but millions of Nigerians are yet to physically see or transact business with the notes 17 days after.