GhIPSS commits to drive interoperability agenda

THE Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), Mr Archie Hesse, has accepted the challenge thrown by the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, for stakeholders to ensure the interoperability of telcos by the end of the year.

When telcos become interoperable, customers will be able to send and receive mobile money across the different mobile phone networks, which is currently not possible.

The Vice-President, speaking at the 5th Ghana Economic Outlook and Business Strategy Conference held in Accra, urged GhIPSS, banks and telecommunication companies to ensure that there is interoperability between Ghana link, which is a GhIPSS platform, the e-zwich platform and the mobile telephone platforms within six months. He said this was important in advancing the electronic payment agenda. He noted that the country had the requisite infrastructure to achieve that goal.

“Interoperability, or the ability of a subscriber to send money from one network to the other, should be possible in Ghana as a matter of course so I encourage banks and mobile network operators to collaborate and increase the range of services available to customers,” the Vice-President stated.

Dr Bawumia pointed out that government was pro-business and, therefore, keen on developing the financing sector to deepen financial inclusion and bring more Ghanaians out of extreme poverty.

That, he noted, had informed government’s decision to abolish the 17.5 % Value Added Tax (VAT) on financial services which was meant to encourage the development of financial transactions and mobile money.

When he took his turn at the conference to moderate discussions on the development of technology backbone to support digital payments, Mr Hesse agreed that interoperability among telcos was extremely important.

He said the absence of interconnectivity was detrimental to the goal of financial inclusion through mobile money. He said GhIPSS was going to meet with key stakeholders to work together to meet the six-month deadline.

GhIPSS currently has the infrastructure that supports interoperability among banks and this technology could be extended to also cover the telcos. Technology companies operating in the financial sphere better known as Fintech companies, said there will be significant growth in digital payments, if inter telcos mobile money transactions was possible.

The Chief Executive of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, who has been passionate about the growth of digital payment, said the interoperability would achieve even more, if government pushed its agencies to accept payments via mobile money and other digital forms of payments.