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Less than 24 hours after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) launched the eNaira, users have registered dissatisfaction with the functionality of its Speed Wallet application.
Over 980 of the 1,951 reviews on Google Playstore gave the eNaira Speed Wallet a 1-star rating, putting the overall score at 2.1 out of five.
Under the app in Google Playstore, James Busayo, a user, lamented the lack of a support icon to address an issue with setting up his account. “Trying to set up my account, saying contact support. (I) have tried same BVN too many times and there’s no support icon available on the app,” he wrote. “(I) Hope this won’t be giving several issues.”
The multiple BVN attempts complaint was echoed by Yusuf Muhammad who was more critical.
Muhammad wrote, “Useless eNaira, right from the beginning, you disabled me for registration by claiming that I had made too many attempts with my BVN (and) I should contact customer support when I didn’t see where I would contact customer support in the app. If possible, I will give ‘0’ star to eNaira.”
For Joshua Odugbemi, his account number was dubbed ‘invalid’ by the app before he was notified that his BVN had been used earlier. He said the app was not ready for public use yet, and needed to undergo more tests before release.
“This app was simply not thoroughly tested. I honestly don’t know who approved this for public use as it has many issues,” he wrote. “It complained that my account number wad invalid, I tried another, and it complained that my BVN had been used.
“I just got confused. You simply should withdraw this app and do a thorough testing before releasing it to us.”
Zumus Crypto Billonaire gave the app an optimistic five-star rating, stating he did so because he wants the project to develop, but went on to lament his inability to sign up.
He wrote, “The reason I gave 5-star (is) I want this project to develop because we need progress in Nigeria. What’s wrong with this platform? I can’t even sign up. They told me too many attempts.”
However, the CBN reacted to many of the complaints, in some cases, advising users to use an active email address linked to their BVN profile as the system requires personal information.
“Before you begin, you need a valid and active email address linked to your BVN profile. The system fetches your BVN-linked email address based on the KYC information,”CBN stated.
“You also need your correct personal information such as: first name and surname, state of origin and DoB associated with your BVN details.”
The app has so far been downloaded over 50,000 times on the Google Playstore since CBN launched it on Monday.
After its launch, Godwin Emefiele, CBN governor said the bank “will continue to refine, fine-tune and upgrade the eNaira” and added that “Nigerians should expect to see additional functionalities in the coming months”.
According to him, some of its features include onboarding of customers without BVN, and the use of the eNaira on the phone without the internet to further drive financial inclusion, making Nigeria one of the first countries in the world to deploy the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) on phones without relying on internet connectivity.
