Another view on e-Money and e-Naira

The Central Bank of Nigeria should be commended on their giant strides in driving E-Banking Business in the country. Without any doubt, this has helped to create and support the Federal Government’s ease of doing business in Nigeria. The use of technology to drive banking and financial transactions has led to the creation of several products driven by Debit Cards, Credit Cards, Point of Sales Machines (POS), USSD Technology, Instant Transfer and Others. It has been generally recognized that Nigeria is the leading nation in the world of E-Banking and technology-driven electronic financial transactions.

The Central Bank of Nigeria in continuation of their pioneering leadership in the E-Banking Business has introduced the E-Money/E-Naira Banking Notes into the Nigerian market to drive financial inclusion and help with the stability of the Nigerian Naira. This is another highly commendable project of the Central Bank of Nigeria, particularly with the lower transaction costs that the E-Naira will bring to money transfers and payments for merchants.

However, there has been a consistent agitation from the lower end merchants, petty traders, farmers, market women, artisans, rural dwellers and even financial inclusion experts that most of these products as commendable as they are, are too sophisticated for the low-income earners in our society. These segments of our population have phones and phone numbers, but do not use smart phones. They are not the data subscribing citizens of Nigeria and are not bank account holders or BVN registered customers.

The lower end of the market needs to be brought into the financial sector of the economy through their GSM phones and phone numbers. This is why we believe that Phone Banking through the transfer of money to the phone numbers of subscribers and redeemable through banking agents is the product missing in the array of banking products that has been introduced by the CBN. If Phone Banking is driven and encouraged by the Central Bank and the Financial Institutions, Petty Traders can do daily savings of their sales by depositing the funds with agents and their phone numbers credited instantly, thus encouraging a saving culture among the over 100 million Nigerians without BVN, Bank accounts and smart phones.

Phone Banking will not only drive the savings culture, but also help the nation to build up data and records on these segments of the populations. Phone Banking is also an opportunity to bring over 100 million Nigerians in the informal financial sector into the formal sector of the economy and help to provide a platform for credit appraisals of several citizens of the country.

Source: https://nairametrics.com/2021/10/11/another-view-on-e-money-and-e-naira/