GHANA: Stakeholders Laud MTN MoMo, Plan Limitless Transactions

MTN Ghana, as part of the Momo@10 celebration organised a stakeholder conference on Momo's contribution towards financial inclusion under the theme "A Decade of Driving Financial Inclusion and socioeconomic Development- The impact of Momo."

Key issues discussed at the conference include MoMo's success journey to a cashlite society since its inception in 2009, stakeholder and regulators role, recalibration of the transaction limit for MoMo users and its prospects towards Ghana's socio-economic development.

Speaking at the event, Mr Maxwell Opoku Afari, the First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), indicated that his outfit has taken advantage of the rapid technological advances and widespread views of mobile money to accelerate the country's migration to expand the scope of financial services to Ghanaians.

He further mentioned that the outcome of MoMo has been overwhelming over the past years adding that the BoG's objective is to leverage on the high mobile phone penetrating to deliver affordable financial services to the growing financially excluded segment of the population which will culminate in increased output of MoMo services.

"The revolution of the MoMo transaction to the Ghanaian economy has instigated a paradigm shift to a new kind of retail banking system where large segments of the unbanked populace are being absorbed in the financial service sector," he stated.

Director of Financial Sector Division of the Ministry of Finance, Mr Sampsom Akligah stated that the ministry is looking at bringing MTN to the table as they engage the Credit Union Associations in the field of technology.

According to him, the ministry is working on a roadmap towards a cashlite economy. "We're working with the Ghana Revenue Authority -GRA to consider the use of mobile money for the collection of tax."

He further urges MTN to ensure their operators are properly registered as they formalize the ecosystem for mobile money.

Speaking on the need to increase the cash limit from GHC 2,000 and GHC 5,000 respectively, Mr Eli Hini the General Manager of Mobile Money Services Limited at MTN Ghana noted that "Today, the average person does more than just money transfer-we believe this is where the opportunity is for us to deepen the MoMo service by preventing customers from coiling back to the use of cash because they have reached their cash limit."

He also urged government to expedite the National Identification process to provide the nation with a centralized ID system to enable MTN track and reach out to customers.

SOURCE:MODERNGHANA / Justice Agbenorsi