Vice President of the Republic of Ghana Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said 15 million Ghanaians currently have bank accounts.
According to him, this was as a result of the successful implementation of Mobile Money Payment Interoperability by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo led government.
Addressing the youth wing of the ruling New Patriotic Party(NPP) in Accra on Wednesday, 12 August 2020, Dr Bawumia explained that with the triangular feature which mobile money payment interoperability allows; that is the transfer of funds from mobile money accounts to bank accounts and vice-versa, as well as from mobile or bank accounts to biometric payment card accounts (ezwich), it “means that anyone with a mobile account has a bank account which will fast track payments out of it and receive interest on their balances.
The Vice President stated that: “Many people did not and do not understand that we have moved away from the world of branch banking into branch-less banking. You can have your bank account on your phone. You can do banking without visiting a bank branch or signing a cheque.”
He further opined that, Ghana is the first and only country in Africa to achieve mobile money interoperability and thanks to that, Ghana is now the fastest-growing mobile money market in Africa.
Mobile money transactions in 2019 amounted to GH¢32.8 billion (a 215% jump in two years).
The total number of transactions recorded under mobile money as of December 2019 was 200 million whereas that of banks was 599,000 (just about 3% of the mobile money number).
“Many people did not and still do not quite understand what I meant when I said every eligible Ghanaian will be able to get a bank account.
“Well, I can say without any fear of contradiction that as a result of mobile money interoperability, over 15 million Ghanaians today (many of whom are unbanked in the traditional sense) have a bank account.
“This is a remarkable achievement and shows the power of digitisation”, Dr Bawumia said.
The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications together with the Government of Ghana, Central Bank, GhIPSS and commercial banks on Thursday 10th May 2018 launched the mobile money interoperability system.
The Mobile Money Payment Interoperability is the service, which allows direct and seamless transfer of funds from one mobile money wallet to another mobile money wallet across networks, which was developed by Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) with active collaboration of the Mobile Industry.
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