MTN Ghana Marks 10 Years of Mobile Money

By G.D. Zaney

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) is set to outdoor a Digital Financial Services Policy and a Cash lite Roadmap to guide the operations of Electronic payments.

MoF is also considering partnering with the Credit Union Association, the Micro-finance sector and the Ghana Revenue Authority to integrate Mobile Money into their operations.

Mr Sampson Akligoh, Director, Financial Services Division, MoF, made these known at the Mobile Money @ 10 Stakeholder Workshop in Accra on Wednesday, July 11, 2019.

Mr Akligoh gave the assurance that MoF would work hard to ensure that all services would be made available for money to be forwarded in all transactions instead of withdrawals to pay for services.

Mr Eli Hini, General Manager, Mobile Money Ltd., underscored the importance of financial inclusion? access to agent network including presence, visibility, liquidity, and convenience of MoMo services to customers? in formalizing the economy.

Mr Hini stressed the need to enhance policies or guidelines on branchless banking, e-money issuer, payment systems and services to promote financial inclusion.

He said Mobile Money had impacted tremendously on many sectors of the economy, having become a cheaper, faster and more convenient channel for financial institutions to disburse their loans.

He mentioned the Agricultural sector, especially the cocoa value chain, for example, where Mobile Money facilitated the sale of cocoa beans and prompt payment, and reduced the challenges associated with underpayment of farmers and dishonesty on the part of purchasing clerks.

Mr Hini called for the digitalisation of the merchant payment system to enable buyers pay retailers and vendors with Mobile Money and urged government to redouble efforts of the National Identification (ID) process for a centralised ID system to make it easy for companies to track and reach out to their customers, adding that the Government-to-People and People-to-Government payment system should be made with MoMo to enable payment for services rendered by the other with MoMo.

In a presentation, Dr Maxwell Opoku Afari, Deputy Governor, Bank of Ghana (BoG), disclosed that to enhance the regulatory environment for MoMo and other similar innovations within the financial ecosystem, BoG had reviewed the Electronic Money Issuers Guidelines (2015) and the Payment Systems (Act 662) culminating in a new regulatory framework for the payments system.

Dr Afari noted that the evolution of mobile money had instigated a paradigm shift to a new kind of retail banking system where large segments of the unbanked populace were being absorbed into the financial services sector.

He said there was the need to pay attention to the pricing of digital financial services to promote competitive practices for increased usage.

Georgina Asare Fiagbenu, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, MTN Ghana (Scancom PLC), said the workshop would enable key players in the financial services industry examine the use of the Mobile Money service to further promote

mobile and electronic payments in Ghana.

MTN Mobile Money, which was launched in July, 2009 has advanced from just sending and receiving money to airtime top-ups and the payment of bills, among other mobile related transactions.

The workshop, which formed part of activities marking the 10th anniversary of the introduction of Mobile Money into Ghana's electronic payments system, therefore, aimed to review the impact of Mobile Money on the delivery of financial services and highlight its importance in efforts to deepen financial inclusion in Ghana.

It was organized on the theme: A Decade of Driving Financial Inclusion and Socio-economic Development?The Impact of MoMo.

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