By Godwill Arthur-Mensah
Accra, Oct. 27, GNA-Ghana has been recognised as the only country in Africa to achieve 100 percent access to financial inclusion in Africa.
The honour has been recorded in this year’s State of Inclusive Instant Payment in Africa Report put together by AfricaNenda and launched at the ongoing Mobile World Congress Africa 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda.
The feat was achieved through the successful implementation of the Mobile Money Interoperability System, which integrated all payments platforms across banks, fintechs and telcos, allowing every Ghanaian to make and receive instant payments.
Commenting on the monumental achievement by Ghana at the opening ceremony of the second edition of Standard Chartered Bank Digital Banking, Innovation and Fintech Festival in Accra, Vice President Bawumia, expressed delight that the Government’s digitalisation agenda was beginning to yield the desired results.
“In fact, because of the mobile money interoperability, where fintechs, banks and telcos have essentially payment platforms that enable every Ghanaian to access and receive payments, Ghana was the only country to score 100 percent on financial inclusion in Africa at the ongoing Mobile World Congress Africa 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda,” Dr Bawumia said.
“You’ve seen mobile money interoperability; you’ve seen the national ID card; you’ve seen digital addresses, you’ve seen the paperless ports, universal QR code, Ghana pays, and so on.
“All of these are laying a particular foundation in this country that will allow us to fully participate in the fourth industrial revolution,” he added.
The Vice President said the credit reference agencies were leveraging on those soft infrastructure, the digital infrastructure to score individuals who want to take loans, which would begin by the first quarter of next year.
That, he said, would underpin the development of a real credit system in Ghana, critical for the country’s development.
The Vice President stated that digital technology was changing the way Africa’s financial service industry offered products and services to consumers, saying that new financial service business models based on digital technologies were enabling inclusive access to financial services across diverse product types for consumers.
“As a government, we realised it was imperative to adopt digital innovation to transform the economy. It is not a venture without opposition, and there are huge costs associated with getting to our destination. However, we are unwavering as we are convinced the benefits will outweigh the costs, and these benefits are already beginning to show,” he said.
“We are already seeing the impact of these digitisation initiatives including efficient public service delivery by all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies on the Ghana.gov portal, combating corruption by removing the middleman, and also ghost names in many transactions, bringing more Ghanaians into the formal sector and driving domestic revenue mobilization, amongst others.”
To achieve greater success and economic growth, Vice President Bawumia called for more collaboration between all players in the fintech ecosystem – banks, fintechs, telecom companies, governments, regulators and consumers –to position Africa as a fintech innovation hub.
He said strong regulatory framework was also necessary across the sub region to drive innovation, noting that Central Banks needed to be ahead of the market and put in place regulations that would be innovation friendly bearing in mind all associated risks.
This year’s report focused on inclusive instant payment systems in 12 African countries and Ghana was the only country that scored 100 percent in access to financial inclusion.
Mr Archie Hesse, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlements Systems (GhIPSS), who was at the launch of the report in Kigali, said from a humble beginning of integrating three instant payment platforms into what the ‘financial inclusion triangle’, GhIPSS had since improved the services by adding other services like Proxy Pay, Internet Gateway Payment, Request to Pay and the Universal QR Code dubbed GHQR, which could be linked to both bank accounts and digital wallets, with affordability as the key driving force.
He observed that the GhIPSS, in collaboration with the banks, had also been implementing a bank-wide wallet called “The GhanaPay” to ensure that the banks also played a role in the mobile money space with the view to bridging the financial inclusion gap.
GNA