Nigerians displayed massive interest in the Central Bank’s eNaira initiative downloading over 200,000 wallets in 24 hours. This is according to information from sources in the Apex Bank with knowledge of the product.
Nigeria’s President Buhari launched the eNaira on Monday the 25th of October 2021, making Nigeria the first African country to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Nairametrics gathers about 156,700 consumer wallets were downloaded while 23,650 merchant wallets were downloaded suggesting a massive early interest and adoption by Nigerians.
A quick check on the Google PlayStore where information about the number of app downloads is displayed indicates over 100,000 downloads have been recorded thus far. Merchant downloads, which are meant for corporates have about 10,000 plus downloads. To put this into context, popular banking apps like GTB, Access Bank, Kuda Bank all have 1 million-plus downloads respectively on the Google Play Store. The apps have been available for years. First Bank has over 5 million-plus downloads, one of the most downloaded banking apps in Nigeria. Apple, meanwhile, does not disclose the number of downloads for apps in the App Store
– Nairametrics