Patronage of Instant Pay system soars

The use of Instant Pay for fund transfers or payments continue to record impressive growth, latest figures from the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) have shown.

Instant Pay is an electronic payment system that enables a customer to transfer money from one bank account to another of a different bank and the transfer is effected instantly. Various banks offer Instant Pay on different platforms including internet and mobile banking platforms and some banks have christened it differently. The generic name in Ghana, however, is GhIPSS Instant Pay (GIP)

According to the GhIPSS 2019 Half Year Industry Performance Report, the volume of the GhIPSS Instant Pay (GIP) transactions shot up to 350,666 between January and June this year compared to 57,301 recorded over the same period last year. This represents a huge growth of 512 percent.

The growth in the patronage of GIP has been consistent. In the first quarter of this year, it grew by 423.9 percent from 24,227 in the first quarter of 2018 to 126,925 transactions. The higher percentage growth in the half year performance indicates that patronage keeps rising.

Instant Pay, just as other products by GhIPSS are offered by the banks to the public.

However because the GIP platform enables real instant transfers, many financial institutions and Fintechs are using it to support various other products. It is therefore highly possible that any real-time electronic payment that you make, regardless of the name given to it by the service provider, is running on GIP.

The Instant Pay platform was introduced to make it possible for individuals and businesses to be able to meet urgent payment commitments and without the need to physically move to a banking hall. It is part of the major efforts to encourage people to keep their money with the banks, knowing that they can access it and make instant payments with their funds even though they are lodged with a bank.

Chief Executive of GhIPSS, Archie Hesse is hopeful that patronage for Instant Pay will continue to go up since there is a real need for it. He urged financial institutions to continue to inform their customers about the existence of the Instant Pay service so that people who need to make or receive funds instantly can resort to it. He stated that GhIPSS will continue to introduce innovative ways of improving the payment system landscape, adding that the public should expect new initiatives soon.