By Dipo Olowookere
As of November 29, 2021, at least 114,900 consumers and merchants have activated the eNaira wallets since it was introduced in October 2021, a report by TheCable has revealed.
A breakdown showed that the consumer wallets constitute about 112,870 of the activated wallets, while the merchant wallets account for just a little over 2,000 wallets.
The eNaira, which is Africa’s first Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in October, is the electronic version of the Naira, the country’s currency.
The launch of the digital Naira, which was aimed to serve about 200 million people in Nigeria, attracted national and international interests as observers wanted to know how well the electronic currency would perform and what problems it would solve in banking and finance space on the continent.
About 24 hours after it was introduced, the app was removed from the Google Play Store because of some glitches but was restored some hours after the issues were resolved.
It was observed that as at November 29, 2021, the app recorded 589,000 downloads on both the Andriod and iOS app stores, with the former accounting for 461,000 downloads and iOS accounting for 128,000 downloads.
Analysis showed that Ecobank and GTBank are currently leading in customers’ adoption of the eNaira, with over 2,000 merchant wallets active, about 20 per cent are domiciled with Ecobank, while GTBank has the majority of the consumer wallets activated by users amongst the top 10 financial institutions in the country.
According to the report, Ecobank is leading in merchant adoption, followed by Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Union Bank, First Bank, UBA, Polaris Bank, Keystone Bank, GTBank, and Wema Bank.
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.
As far as consumer wallets go, GTBank has more than 30 per cent 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.
Modupe Gbadeyanka 
Aduragbemi Omiyale