Patronage of Instant Pay Continues to Record Huge Jump

By Kingsley Asare

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

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 per cent.

The growth in the patronage of GIP has been consistent. In the first quarter of this year, it grew by 423.9 per cent 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 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)

Instant Pay, just as other products by GhIPSS, is 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 products. It is therefore highly possible that any real time electronic payment that you make, regardless of 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, Mr Archie Hesse, is hopeful that patronage for Instant Pay will continue to go up since there was 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 would continue to introduce innovative ways of improving the payment system landscape, adding that the public should expect new initiatives soon.

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