Users of mobile money will, from today, be able to send and receive mobile money across networks without any hassle with the launch of Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) platform.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Inter Bank Payment and Settlement System (GhIPSS), Archie Hesse, confirmed this at a press conference.
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He explains that apart from sending and receiving mobile money across networks, one can transfer funds from mobile money to a bank account or ezwitch wallet and vice versa.
Interoperability will eliminate the complexities associated with transfers across the various mobile money networks in Ghana and also reduce the cost of initiating transactions across networks, as customers will no longer need the services of third-party payment providers.
For now the networks on the platform are MTN, Vodafone and AirtelTigo.
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Speaking at the launch of the platform, Dr. Bawumia said the mobile revolution presented a significant opportunity to ensure financial inclusion to rope in the 70% of the bankable population.
“Today, we have in excess of 37 million connected mobile phones in Ghana, and that means a huge number of people can be brought into the financial space just by using mobile phones. These mobile phones serve as vehicles that can be used to mobilize the millions of cedis held outside the banking sector,” he said.
But the Vice President remarked that, “banks and the telcos are operating in silos,” hence the need for the interoperability between the telcos for example.
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The effective implementation and utilization of this interoperability would make Ghana a cash-lite economy and Dr. Bawumia said this “will not only bring about efficiency and convenience, but will also save this country lots of money that we spend in maintaining currency notes.”
“I therefore fully support the call for us to go beyond using mobile money for cash-in, cash-out, and more importantly, use it at merchant points, use it for bulk payments, bill payments etc. With the ongoing e-governance projects, our public sector institutions should be ready to accept electronic payments to give meaning to the various efforts at introducing different electronic payment channels.”
Dr. Bawumia further added that the government had “two more aspects of interoperability that we have to complete in the next couple of months, the second phase.”