eNaira: Ecobank and GTBank Lead in Adoption of Central Bank Digital Currency

Ecobank and GTBank are presently leading in customers adoption of the eNaira according to a report by TheCable. eNaira is Africa’s first Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) launched by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in October. 

TheCable report revealed that with more than 2,000 merchant wallets active, about 20 percent are domiciled with Ecobank, while GTB has the majority of the consumer wallets activated by users amongst the top 10 financial institutions in the country.

The report further reveals that Ecobank is leading in merchant adoption, followed by Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Union Bank, First Bank, UBA, and Polaris Bank. Others banks in the top 10 list include Keystone Bank, GTB, and Wema Bank – in that order.

On the other hand, GTBank is leading with the majority of the consumer wallets activated by users from the top 10 financial institutions in the country. The bank has more than 30 percent of the total activated consumer wallets held by all banks in Nigeria. Access Bank, Zenith Bank, First Bank, UBA, Polaris Bank, and Ecobank are the top seven banks with the highest number of activated consumer wallets.

In October, CBN unveiled the very first Central Bank Digital Currency in Africa with a lot of national and international interest on how well the electronic currency will perform and what problems it would solve in the banking and finance space on the continent.

As of November 29, 2021, about a month after eNaira went live, 589,000 downloads had been recorded for the digital currency across the iOS and Android app stores. That translates to an average of 20,000 eNaira downloads per day since launch.

Of the 589,000 downloads, 461,000 have been from the Android side of the market, while iOS downloads stand at only 12F4008,000 downloads. Most of the downloads on both platforms happened in the first few days after the currency went live

As of November 29, 2021, there were at least 114,900 activated wallets. These wallets are broken down into two types: consumer wallets and merchant wallets. Consumer wallets stood at about 112,870 activated wallets. Merchant wallets were just a little over 2,000 wallets