This strategic collaboration is in line with the Bank of Ghana’s Guidelines for Domestic Processing of Payment Card Transactions with Payment Cards Issued in Ghana. The guidelines, published in August 2021, provide the mechanism for international card schemes to process their domestic transactions locally.

In partnering with GhIPSS, Visa takes advantage of GhIPSS’ unique position as the National Switch and a provider of interoperable platforms for digital financial services as well as its sixteen-year track record of processing payments domestically in Ghana.

GhIPSS will also benefit from integrating Visa’s advanced payment processing technology into its platform to deliver Visa’s brand promise to domestic customers.

“Our partnership with Visa is an important step for our business. It is an outstanding opportunity for us to leverage Visa’s expertise and assets to get better at our craft while delivering value to Visa customers in Ghana,” CEO of GhIPSS, Archie Hesse said. “We are confident that this partnership will be a success and will expand into other areas of mutual interest in the future.”

According to him, the partnership also promises to deliver some savings for both local banks and their customers since it eliminates payments made in dollars to the previous processing entities abroad.

Moreover, GhIPSS, being a state-owned payment switch, is mandated by the Bank of Ghana to have a commitment to public good, so it will deliberately work towards cutting cost for both banks and individual customers, while taking advantage of the increase in the volumes of transactions on its platform from this deal.

Archie Hesse also noted that the deal promises to deepen financial inclusion on a number of legs:

• Banks which have non-Visa ATMs can now be confident that since the processing of Visa transactions is local, they can now make their ATM’s Visa compliant to service more people for less.
• Visa services can now be extended to people below the middle class since the cost on it will be reduced.
• Lastly, Visa Card can be combined with GhIPSS’ ghlink Card to enable users receive international remittance directly on their combined Visa-ghlink Cards and also be able to shop online with the Visa-ghlink cards..

Archie Hesse is confident that beyond benefitting banks and its customers, the partnership with Visa will open even more doors for Fintechs to also innovate and further deepen financial inclusion.

Vice President, and Cluster Head of Visa West Africa, Andrew Uaboi said: “This collaboration
underlines our unwavering commitment to driving financial inclusion expansion across Ghana. We believe that by leveraging our global network and innovative payment solutions, we can empower individuals and businesses, fostering economic growth and prosperity for all.”

He also assured Ghanaians that in line with the vision of Bank of Ghana and GhIPSS, Visa will be committed to making a contribution to ensure that the cost of its service is reduced for both banks and customers under the umbrella of this partnership.

Meanwhile, the two parties are still ironing out the technical and commercial details of the partnership before they could finalize on what benefits they can extend to banks and customers. The benefits are however expected to kick in before the close of the year.