GHANA:‘Payment Systems and Services Bill’ to be passed in June – BoG

The Bank of Ghana(BoG) says it is confident that works on the Payment Systems and Services Bill being done by parliament will be completed by the end of June this year.

The Payment Systems and Services Bill has been in parliament for about 2 years.

When passed into law it is expected to further strengthen the regulatory environment and provide additional support for non-banks to establish, and operate businesses offering electronic payment services.

The Bill also seeks to promote innovation in the design of new secure electronic money products and payment services and also engender competition in the electronic money business.

Speaking on the impact of the Bill, the Head of Payment Systems at the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Settor Amediku stated that its passage should not just aid in promoting financial inclusion, but would negatively affect the income of banks who fail to be innovative.

“It’s going to introduce a lot of competition in the sense that non-banks are going to be licensed by the Bank of Ghana to provide payment services like the Banks. So Banks that are not ready to innovate are going to find it difficult to mobilize data and increase their income” he said.

Background

Available data from the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhiPSS) shows that there is an increasing shift away from the use of cheques and cash to electronic payments channels for various transactions.

Also the latest figures released by the Bank of Ghana (BoG), show that the total value of mobile money transactions for example from 2017 to 2018, increased from 155 billion cedis to 223 billion cedis.

This represents a growth of 43.2 percent for that period. On the other hand the total amounts kept on E-zwich cards in the country increased from GHC 74.43 million Ghana Cedis in 2017 to GHC 123.19 million Ghana Cedis in 2018, representing a boost of 65.52 percent.

SOURCE:GHANAWEB