Central Bank of Nigeria has sent draft guidelines on the eNaira project to Nigerian banks.
Gatekeepers News reports that the CBN has sent a presentation to Nigerian banks about the eNaira project, revealing guidelines and details about its design and operational module.
The Apex bank in the presentation described how the new currency would be designed and operated.
The e-Naira whose pilot launch has been scheduled to take place on October 1, is a legal tender for the entire country which will have non-interest-bearing CBDC status, a transaction limit for customers, and a value-based transaction limit.
According to the presentation, participants in the e-Naira program are featured in five stages: Monetary Authority Suite, Financial Institution Suite, eGovernment Suite, amongst others.
In the Monetary Authority Suite; The Central Bank will be handing the first product component that includes issue, distribute, redeem and destroy the currency. Store data on a cloud server, monitor and analyse currency transactions.
The Financial Institution Suite on the other hand is a licensed financial institution that will be able to request currency or issue stable coins, manage digital currency across branches, KYC, identify, and AML compliance capability.
In eGovernment Suite, the government will be able to efficiently process digital payments sent to and received from citizens and businesses.
The Central Bank of Nigeria consequently outlined the proposed transaction cost for the e-Naira wallet. However, the digital currency infrastructure does not charge for user-to-merchant transactions and P2P wallet transactions.
The Apex bank noted that it shall be the responsibility of Nigerian banks to promote and market the centrally issued digital currency as a cash alternative to existing and potential customers which is in support of the CBN’s goal for financial inclusion.
Banks will be allowed to invite all their customers to register for the e-Naira through pre-generated codes, and invitation codes for onboarding to a specific list of selected customers. Onboarding will be done for customers who have a code assigned by their banks which banks have already validated and verified these customers.
The e-naira system will be subjected to comprehensive security checks, as all data and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) will be kept off the ledger and will not be stored on the ledger.
