There's a full bouquet of digital payment solutions available in Ghana - Archie Hesse

Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPPS), Archie Hesse, has said that the country at the moment has available the full bouquet of digital payment solutions. Mr. Archie Hesse made this known during a webinar organized by Stanbic Bank for SMEs on Thursday, September 3.

According to Mr. Archie Hesse, Ghana has for the past decade been working on moving the country from a cash based economy to a cashlite society and this has resulted in the availability of digital payment platforms including the flagship platform, E-zwich.

“We have developed a number of platforms for digital payment solutions and at the moment a lot of government agencies use these platforms in making payments especially salaries”, Mr. Hesse said.

On her part, the Country Manager for CSquared Ghana, Ms. Estelle Akofio Sowah, who was part of the panel encouraged SMEs to develop omni channels where customers can access all their products without moving in and out of multiple platforms. “COVID-19 has changed customer behaviour yet there are many customer behaviours that remain the same.

People are looking for easy engagement and easy access to their service providers. What businesses have to consider is simplifying the way customers engage with them leveraging on digitization”, Ms. Akofio Sowah said.

She further noted that the strain COVID-19 has put on people’s finances has made them become more aware of quality. She said that “people’s incomes and spending have been impacted negatively by the COVID-19 pandemic, making customers more cautious than ever before.

This means that businesses also have to be more cautious about differentiation in terms of quality.”

The Stanbic SME Webinar is part of a series of virtual conferences targeted at SMEs with the aim of supporting them with the necessary tools and skills to enable them not only survive the COVID-19 pandemic but to thrive despite the difficulties.

The September 3 webinar, was held under the theme ‘Business agility in the COVID-19 era: Digitisation and payment solutions – implications and opportunities’.

Other resource persons on the panel included Mr. Derrydean Dadzie, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Technology and Head of Digital Transformation at Stanbic Bank, Mr. Patrick Quantson.