Rakiya Mohammed, the director of information technology for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), confirmed that the bank is working on the CBDC technology for more than two years now and they’ve made sufficient progress to make an important announcement.
“Before the end of the year, the Central Bank will be making a special announcement and possibly launching a pilot scheme in order to be able to provide this kind of currency to the populace,” declared Mohammed.
Mohammed claims that the bank wants to create a CBDC in order to make money transfer easier from abroad to Nigeria. The CBDC would increase the speed of the transfer, regardless of which country the money is being sent from.
The CBN director mentioned that the bank wants to explore several technological options and different industry players while also moving forward to the next stage of proof of concept in order to pilot the scheme. Mohammed also mentioned that the CBN is taking into consideration the architecture, accessibility problems, and privacy-related issues.
Currently, Nigeria has a negative stance against cryptocurrencies.