Nigeria may Launch e-Naira Today

Nigerian officials are preparing to launch the Nigerian CBDCs today after a long term delay. 

According to reports, Nigeria will announce the launch of e-Naira, Nigerian Central Bank Digital Currency, on 25 October. The announcement of the e-Naira launch will be done by Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria. The announcement will take place at the State House in Abuja.

Before this, the launch of e-Naira was scheduled on the independence day of Nigeria i.e on 1 October 2021. But the central bank of Nigeria (CBN) said that they were facing a preparation hurdle because of the 1 October celebration. CBN also claimed that Central Banks and institutions are ready to launch but the occasion of 1 October was full of hurdles. 

Controversy with e-Naira 

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) partnered with Bitt Inc, a Barbados-based fintech startup, to develop the Nigerian CBDCs. 

In response to the decision to tie up partnership with Bitt Inc, many other Fintech firms raised issues on the decision of CBN. Most of the issues raised by the Fintech firms claimed that CBN only gives priority to the national Fintech company and they don’t want any kind of better company for the development of e-Naira. So Fintech firms claimed that the choice of CBN to establish a partnership with FinTech firms was partial. 

China’s CBDCs 

With the increasing demand for advancement in the payment infrastructure, most countries are moving toward blockchain adoption. China became the first-ever country in the world to launch its digital Yuan ( Chinese CBDCS). 

It is worth noticing, China banned crypto before the rollout of Digital Yuan and also Nigeria banned digital assets operations before the announcement of e-Naira. 

It seems that Nigeria is trying to follow the Chinese government to make the rollout of the National Central Bank Digital Currency better. 

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