Nigeria's Central Bank To Allow Bill Payments In Its CBDC e-Naira: Report

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will reportedly allow residents to pay bills, TV subscriptions, and flight tickets using the eNaira, which is a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The upgrade will commence next week and allow members of the public to use e-Naira as a payment method for bills, flight tickets, or TV and Internet subscriptions, Vanguard reported.

To do so, the financial institution has partnered with the mobile banking firm – Bizi Mobile.

Bariboloka Koyor, Branch Controller at the CBN, said, “Starting from next week, there is going to be an upgrade on the eNaira speed wallet app that will allow you to do transactions such as paying for DSTV or electric bills or even paying for flight tickets."

“This is a project that the CBN has rolled out to reach out to every Nigerian in terms of financial inclusion and in terms of efficiency, reliability, and safety of banking transactions so that we can do banking transactions very easily and safely and the people in Nigeria can enjoy the benefit of the eNaira,” Koyor added.

The move aims to popularize the central bank-owned digital currency and encourage people to employ it more often in their daily transactions.

While CBN has attempted to introduce the eNaira to the locals, the success of the campaign remains uncertain as Nigerians are highly intrigued by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

A recent study has shown that over 33 million of Nigeria’s adults have owned or traded digital assets in the past six months. While 52% of them have invested more than half of their wealth into the market, 70% vowed to increase their exposure by the end of this year.

The research showed that the growing interest in the digital asset class is fueled mainly by the accelerating inflation levels.