Bitt Inc, a Barbados-based fintech startup, would serve as the Central Bank of Nigeria’s technical partner for the proposed e-naira. The company is trusted due to its successful launch of Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s DCash.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said on Monday that it has picked Bitt Inc because of its “technical competence, efficiency, platform security, interoperability, and implementation experience.”
It also took into account the fintech firm’s work on the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s digital currency, DCash, which was launched in April.
The collaboration news comes on the same day that the CBN released preliminary guidelines for the e-naira, the central bank digital currency.
Project Giant, a project of Nigeria’s central bank, will be pegged to the value of the country’s fiat currency, the naira.
The CBN is expected to begin testing the CBDC in October, however Ghana’s central bank is also mulling a digital currency deployment.
The Nigerian Central Bank banned commercial banks from offering account services to cryptocurrency exchanges in February.
Despite the crackdown, reports indicate that interest in cryptocurrencies and trading volume in the country is still growing.
