The Bank of Ghana has urged private players in the digital payments industry to collaborate with each other in order to further boost the penetration of electronic payments in the country.

Despite mobile money service’s significant contributions to Ghana’s financial inclusion drive, cash transactions still remain a dominant base of the local economy.

Speaking at a MoMo stakeholder forum organized by MTN Ghana under the theme “digitizing payments in Ghana; A collaborative effort for success”, Panellists were unanimous in calling for effective collaboration among industry players.

“Over the past decade, mobile money accounts have increased thirty-fold, recording about 44 million as of June 2021. The volume of mobile money interoperability transactions has also increased twenty-fourfold since its launch in 2018 resulting in 10.3 million as of June 2021” according to the Bank of Ghana.

Despite the above, cash payments remain the most preferred mode of payment for many businesses.

The Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Ernest Addison, in a speech read on his behalf by Head of payment systems at the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Settor Amediku at a MoMo Stakeholder Engagement on Wednesday, August 11, 2021, said the situation leaves more to be desired.

“To take advantage of the existing opportunities, the Bank’s long-term strategy for the payment systems is to push for more collaboration among providers of financial digital products and electronic financial services. In some jurisdictions, such collaborative efforts have fostered greater economies of scale through resource pooling of infrastructure and minimized the cost of testing new technologies, which have helped accelerate the digitization of the value chain for both merchants and users,” Dr. Addison said.

Head of Fintech at the Bank of Ghana, Kwame Oppong noted that even though significant transactions were taking place between mobile money wallets, the Central Bank’s agenda is to encourage the use of mobile money in the payment for goods and services indicating that “the large chunk of transactions are in that area”.

Speaking at the same event, CEO of MTN mobile Money Limited and convener of the stakeholder engagement forum, Eli Hini, called for enhanced collaboration among industry players.

“No individual can do it all alone. The keyword for us should be collaboration, and we should have the customer at the centre of it all,” Mr. Hini said.