In line with the overall digital Ghana agenda, staff and officials of Ecobank Ghana went on a vigorous digital finance campaign at Osu to encourage Ghanaians to adopt its mobile banking app for more convenience.
The team from the bank was led by Group Head for Direct Banking, Naana Araba Abban, and Anglophone West African Head for Consumer Banking, Tara Squire.
They targeted shop owners, table top traders, taxi and trotro drivers and even random individuals with a message that “you don’t need to travel through the heavy traffic to the bank and join a long queue just to do one simple thing because the Ecobank Mobile App offers all banking services on your handheld device in the comfort of your home and or office.”
Tara Squire told journalists that the App allows users to even open an Express Bank Account at Ecobank with limited KYC (particulars) without visiting the bank, adding that such an account allows up to GHC2,000 cash out per day.
According to him, the Express Account can be created in less than five minutes and it also attracts interest for the owner.
He said the App also comes with a touch and pay feature that enables even simple table top traders like roasted plantain sellers to receive electronic payment with either Visa or MasterCard just by having the App on their phone.
“You can link any Visa or MasterCard issued by any bank to the Ecobank Mobile App and use it for transactions even if you don’t have an Ecobank account,” he said.
Tara Squire said the Ecobank Mobile App also allows interoperability, where users could transfer money from their account to another account in another bank, just like writing an Ecobank cheque to be deposited in an account in another bank.
The App, he said, also enables money transfers from and to mobile money wallets and other digital finance platforms.
“The Xpress Cash feature also allows people to generate and send a token to any phone via SMS or WhatsApp for the receiver to go and do a cardless withdrawal at any Ecobank ATM by dialing the token in,” he said.
Indeed, Tara Squire sent tokens to some individuals and they did a cardless withdrawal at a nearby Ecobank ATM. And cashing out is free for the receiver.
He said the App is connected to lots of schools who accept school fees and some churches who also accept offering and donations via the app; and utility services providers are also on to accept bills payment.
1 million users
Naana Araba Abban said across the 33 African countries where Ecobank operates, there are at least one million users of the App, out of which Ecobank Ghana alone has over 200,000 users.
“Ghana is indeed in the lead in terms of uptake of this App and this sits well with the government’s overall digital Ghana – digital inclusion and financial inclusion agenda,” she said.
She further explained that the bank is targeting all levels of individuals because that way the App will help to mop up both big and small amounts of cash into the banking system and on to digital platform and help government to arrive at the cash-lite society faster.
In this era of huge public concern about cyber fraud, particularly on the mobile money platform, Nana Araba Abban said the Ecobank Mobile App has the highest level of security and the bank has set up a whole department to ensure every Ecobank platform is robust and highly secured – and that every transaction passes a strict security test.
Naana Araba Abban also pointed out that users are required to key in their secret PIN at every step of a transaction and the user often gets SMS notification of a transaction before it is completed, to ensure that if a that transaction is not authorized by the account owner, he or she can take step to stop it.
“The mobile app is downloadable from a Google Play Store and Apple Store but the service is also available on short code *770#,” she said.
She said the campaign to rope in as many Ghanaians as possible unto the mobile banking platform will continue to other parts of the country in the coming weeks.
