New Telegraph

Digital Currency: CBN seeks NCC ‘s support on USSD cod

For improvement on its digital currency to drive financial inclusion, the Central Bank of Nigeria has disclosed plan to introduce Unstructured Supplementary (USSD) code while seeking the support of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and other telecoms operators. Disclosing this on Friday at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) African Department Speakers Series held virtually. The Deputy Governor of the CBN, Kingsley Obiora, said the apex bank will be seeking the support of the stakeholders for the use of the USSD code.

He said that Nigeria was doing well based on a PwC report which showed that Nigeria was number one in terms of adoption, adding that the CBN would keep growing and improving on the system. Obiora added that the introduction of the USSD code became necessary to improve financial inclusion in the country and to ensure people without smartphones could still transact on the eNaira platform. He said: “We have made serious progress in the last seven to eight years because when the current governor resumed in 2014, one of the pillars of his vision was to significantly improve financial inclusion.

So at the time, we were at 48 per cent of our population within the financial system and given several policies that he conceived and implemented, we are almost at 70 per cent. “That still leaves us with about 30 per cent of our population out of the financial system and we believe the CBDC can help reduce that number even more. A lot of people might not have smartphones but that is essentially the next step of our improvement in the CBDC, to introduce the USSD code, so those that do not have smartphones can still transact.”

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