CBN’s Payments Vision 2028 gives the eNaira a lifeline

When the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) launched the eNaira in October 2021, it presented the project as a landmark step in Nigeria’s push towards a cashless economy. As Africa’s first central bank digital currency (CBDC) designed for everyday use, it was expected to make payments easier, reduce remittance costs, expand financial inclusion, and support economic growth.

Nearly five years later, those ambitions remain largely unrealised. The eNaira struggled to gain widespread adoption because it offered little that existing bank apps, fintech wallets, and mobile money platforms were not already providing more conveniently.

In its Payments System Vision (PSV) 2028 strategy, unveiled on June 1, the CBN signals a major rethink of the eNaira’s role. Rather than positioning it as a standalone digital wallet competing with banks, fintechs, and mobile money providers, the central bank wants the eNaira to become part of the infrastructure that underpins Nigeria’s digital payments ecosystem. 

The strategy places the CBDC alongside initiatives such as open banking, digital identity, cross-border payments, and emerging financial technologies.

The shift reflects lessons from the eNaira’s slow adoption since its launch in 2021. As a consumer-facing payment product, it struggled to offer a compelling alternative to existing digital payment options. 

The eNaira’s early challenges are well documented. Access initially required a Bank Verification Number (BVN) or National Identification Number (NIN), making it difficult for many unbanked Nigerians to participate. Like most central bank digital currencies, the eNaira was designed with strict identity verification requirements to help prevent fraud, money laundering, and other illicit financial activities.

However, those requirements also created barriers for many Nigerians who lacked formal identification or did not have bank accounts, limiting the CBDC’s reach among the very populations it was meant to include.

For users who could access it, the platform offered few advantages over existing alternatives such as bank apps, USSD services, mobile money platforms, and fintech wallets that were already widely used and trusted.

As a result, adoption remained limited. Despite subsequent efforts to introduce USSD access, merchant payment tools, and government-payment pilots, the eNaira accounted for only a small fraction of digital transactions. Its limited role during Nigeria’s 2023 cash shortage also raised questions about its practical value.

Over time, the project became one of several examples frequently cited in discussions about CBDCs struggling to achieve mainstream adoption.

The CBN acknowledges many of these shortcomings in PSV 2028. According to the document, the eNaira currently has “millions of wallets” and has processed about ₦22 billion ($16.02 million) in transactions. 

“Adoption has been slow, barriers include limited stakeholder engagement and buy-in in design and implementation, limited adoption and integration drive, limited resources and capacities for retail CBDC implementation, undertook awareness creation, onboarding, use case development, which are not core CBN functions, etc.,” the regulator stated in the document.

Moving from product to infrastructure

One of the clearest signals in PSV 2028 is that the CBN increasingly views payment systems as interconnected infrastructure rather than standalone products. Throughout the document, there is a strong emphasis on interoperability, digital identity, open banking, real-time payments, and regulatory innovation.

The document identifies cross-border payments and CBDC integration as strategic priorities and calls for deeper collaboration with regional and global payment networks. Although the document does not provide a comprehensive roadmap for taking the eNaira beyond Nigeria, it indicates that future development of the digital currency will likely focus on supporting regional payments, remittance flows, and cross-border commerce.

PSV 2028 also recognises that technology alone will not determine the eNaira’s success. Consumer trust, security, interoperability, and ease of use remain critical challenges.

The strategy proposes stronger consumer-protection mechanisms, improved cybersecurity frameworks, enhanced fraud monitoring, and greater coordination across the payments ecosystem. These initiatives are intended to strengthen confidence in digital payments more broadly, creating an environment in which innovations such as the eNaira can gain greater acceptance.

Whether the strategy succeeds remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the CBN is no longer treating the eNaira as a standalone experiment. Under PSV 2028, the digital currency is being repositioned as one element of a much larger effort to build a more connected, secure, and interoperable financial system. For a project that many had written off as a missed opportunity, that shift may offer the eNaira a second lifeline.