In an interview, Mr. Archie Hesse, the Chief Executive of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), said restricting shoppers to cash works to the disadvantage of shop owners as consumers are restricted to only cash form of payment.

“If I ran out of cash in the middle of shopping and the shop doesn’t have a POS, I will leave to the next shop where there is a POS to continue buying and the shop without the POS would have lost money that was coming to his or her business”.

 Mr. Hesse explained that merchants or shop owners can enter into various arrangements with the banks to get the POSes on terms that they can afford.  He urged those who still do not have POSes to quickly speak to their banks before they lose out on the peak of the shopping period.

The GhIPSS CEO also urged merchants with POSes to display them because “sometimes you go to a shop and you find something else you want to buy but because you don’t’ have enough cash and you don’t see a POS displayed, you just walk away”. 

According to him the future of payment is electronic and therefore businesses who want to remain profitable must invest in these payment devices.  He also encouraged merchants to train their attendants to know how to effectively use the POSes, explaining that, some attendants hide the POSes because they are not familiar with its usage.

Mr. Hesse hinted that new initiatives will be introduced next year that will drive preference for payment with cards and urged merchants to get the POSes because they will have use for them. 

Many shops and other merchants do not have POSes despites the benefits to them.

As shopping peaks for the yuletide, POSes may become very useful particularly for shoppers who run out of cash but can use their cards to pay for additional shopping.