Nigeria has formed a new task force to explore the implications of stablecoin adoption in one of Africa’s largest economies.
The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, announced the new initiative in Washington on the sidelines of the annual IMF and World Bank meetings. He revealed that the task force was formed by the central bank, the Ministry of Finance, and other relevant government institutions.
Stablecoins have become a global phenomenon, and at the annual IMF meeting, they were among the main topics regulators and policymakers discussed, revealed Cardoso.
“The message from there is that the Central Bank Governor, the Ministry of Finance, and others reached a general consensus on the need to support innovation and ensure it continues. By no means does anybody want to stifle innovation,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the meetings.
“However, there is also a need to balance this with the risks involved in these new technologies and digital currencies.”
Beyond the task force, the top bank has been partnering with industry stakeholders to promote innovation while preserving the West African nation’s monetary sovereignty, the governor said. It also recently met with fintech leaders for a strategy session under the theme “Shaping the Future of FinTech in Nigeria: Innovation, Inclusion, and Integrity.”
Nigeria is one of the world’s most active digital asset markets. In this year’s Chainalysis global adoption index, it ranked sixth overall and third for DeFi value received. A separate report found that the country transacted $57 billion in the year ending June 2025, with 26.3 million Nigerians owning digital assets.
For Nigerians, access to stablecoins has become increasingly important in recent years as the local currency has taken a battering. In the first half of last year, the naira was identified as the worst-performing currency globally, dipping nearly 70% in the year ending May 2024.
This currency devaluation has pushed millions of Nigerians to U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins in payments, cross-border transfers, and as a store of value.
The country’s pragmatic approach to digital assets is reflected in the statistics: only 14% of Nigerian digital asset holders are traders. 67% hold these assets as a store of value, while 18% are pragmatic users who rely on digital assets for daily payments, says Tochy Emerole, the marketing lead at Quidax, one of only two licensed local exchanges.
The Nigerian government has a checkered past with digital assets. While it’s now supporting the industry and pledging to implement enabling regulations, it has previously cracked down on the sector. Initially, there was a directive to local lenders against processing digital asset payments. When that was overturned, the government clamped down on offshore exchanges, blaming them for the naira’s steep decline.
Vantage Bank targets 96% cost reduction with stablecoins
Elsewhere, American community lender Vantage Bank says it expects to reduce the costs of cross-border transactions by up to 96% by integrating stablecoins.
CEO Jeff Sinnott told attendees of the Federal Reserve Community Bank conference that it projects the fee for a cross-border transaction to dip to $0.28 from the current $6.78.
“When you’re doing cross border payments, correspondent banking is incredibly expensive, incredibly slow, and has a lot of intermediaries that are taking a toll,” Sinnott stated, adding that stablecoins could eliminate these middlemen, making the payments instant and cost-effective.
Vantage Bank is a community-based lender based in San Antonio that primarily serves the state of Texas. It holds over $4.7 billion in assets. According to Sinnott, nearly a third of its clients have global operations, making cross-border payments a primary business line.
Sinnott’s announcement comes at a time when Vantage Bank has launched a turnkey solution allowing American banks to integrate tokenized deposits and stablecoins. The lender partnered with Wyoming-based digital asset custodian, Custodia.
The two claim that their token can function as both a stablecoin and a tokenized deposit, depending on the use case. Any bank or credit union that taps into the network can interact with all the other participants, “enabling a higher level of security, operational stability, and ease of integration than conventional stablecoin solutions.”
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Source: https://coingeek.com/nigeria-forms-task-force-to-study-stablecoin-adoption/