Business News of Sunday, 24 June 2018
Source: citibusinessnews.com
2018-06-24
Archie Hesse, CEO of GhIPSS
The CEO of the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) Archie Hesse, says the creation of a separate regulator for technology companies in Ghana would be critical to the success of Ghana’s Fintech industry.
According to him, just as there is the Bank of Ghana regulates the financial players in the country, a special body needs to be set up to ensure the products and services of technology companies meet international standards.
Currently, there were 71 Fintech companies operating in the country.
Speaking on the need for an effective regulatory regime to guide the growing Fintech industry, Mr. Hesse said the Bank of Ghana is currently ill equipped to monitor the financial technology companies like it does the financial institutions.
“There are two main areas in the Fintech arena, we have the business which is financial services, which the Central Bank is the regulator for. And I think in the technology sector as well, we need a regulator there. The regulator is needed because if companies like Hubtel develop applications, it will be appropriate to have a regulator who can ascertain how well it was developed.”
Mr. Hesse went on to add that in the technology space there are methodologies to assess how safe and sound the applications that are developed are.
He was speaking at the just ended Citi Fm and Citi TV’s FinTech Summit which part of the month long Citi Business Festival.
The summit which was on the theme ‘The Future of Financial Technology Summit’, came off on June 14, 2018 at the Swiss Spirit Alisa Hotel.
The event assembled players in the financial sector including Fintech [Financial technology] firms, banks and a representative from the Bank of Ghana.
Some of the speakers at the event were the Head of Payment Systems, at the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Setor Amediku, the CTO of PaySwitch, Emmanuel Osei Akoto and the CEO of Rancard Solutions, Kofi Dadzie.
The rest were William Derban from Fidelity Bank and the CEO of Hubtel- Alex Adjei-Brahm, among others.