body-container-line-1

Payment Systems And Settlement Bill To Change Fintech Space

Business & Finance Payment Systems And Settlement Bill To Change Fintech Space
MAR 27, 2019 LISTEN

After it becomes an Act, all mobile money operators are required, within 90 days to apply to the BoG for a licence. Also, fintechs which operate or want to operate in the financial services system can also apply directly to BoG for a licence.

“It also means that anybody coming to operate in our payment system space must at least give 30 per cent of the shareholding to only Ghanaians.

It also provides the framework for promoting a secured electronic transaction,” he noted.

Dr Amediku added that the new Bill could also help improve the efficiency of government revenue collection as it would be digitised and people in the informal sector could also engage in online transactions using platforms such as mobile money.

“It is going to create the enabling environment for the whole country to make our payments electronic and more efficient,” he said.

Security concerns

Fraud in the mobile money landscape is rife and addressing it, Dr Amediku said, in the Bill, there were laid down provision for cyber security and security of transactions as a result of the licensing by the BoG.

“They need to get international certification such as ISO, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS).

Attaining all these standards is going to enhance the security of payment ecosystem because if your system is not certified, there is no way BoG will give you licence”, he said.

Statistics

The 2017 payment systems oversight annual report by the BoG indicated that the value of retail payments (excluding cash) increased by 43.18 per cent to GH¢381.43billion in 2017 from GH¢266.39 billion in 2016.

The growth in the value of the retail payment instruments was on account of increase in the value of mobile money services (98.50%), and e-zwich (45.34%).

The report also noted that mobile money had overtaken cheques as the main non-cash retail payment instrument with 981.6 million volume of transactions, followed by debit card (60.4 million), e-zwich (8.4 million), cheques (7.3 million) and Direct Credit Transfer (6.1 million) in 2017.

However, in terms of the value of transactions undertaken in 2017, cheques continued to maintain its lead with GH¢179.6 billion while mobile money followed closely with GH¢155.8 billion.

—Graphic.com.gh

body-container-line