{"id":1234805,"date":"2022-10-26T07:58:44","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T07:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/26\/mwc22-ghana-hailed-as-mobile-money-interoperability-makes-country-no-1-in-africa\/"},"modified":"2022-10-26T07:58:44","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T07:58:44","slug":"mwc22-ghana-hailed-as-mobile-money-interoperability-makes-country-no-1-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/26\/mwc22-ghana-hailed-as-mobile-money-interoperability-makes-country-no-1-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"MWC22: Ghana hailed as Mobile Money Interoperability makes country No. 1 in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\">\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"304\"  alt=\"\" title=\"Archie Hesse GhIPSS\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Archie-Hesse-GhIPSS.jpg\" data- class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image lazyload\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"304\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Archie-Hesse-GhIPSS.jpg\"   alt=\"\" title=\"Archie Hesse GhIPSS\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Archie Hesse is the head GhIPSS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><strong><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">Ghana has been recognized as the only country that has reached maturity stage in access to financial inclusion in Africa.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">This was contained in this year\u2019s State of Inclusive Instant Payment in Africa Report put together by AfricaNenda and launched at the ongoing Mobile World Congress Africa 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">The report seeks to tell a story about all instant pay rollouts across the continent to identify the areas of commonality with the view to driving adoption to boost financial inclusion on the continent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">This year, the report focused on inclusive instant payment systems in 12 Africa countries and Ghana was the only country that scored 100% on access to financial inclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">Ghana\u2019s feat was based on the successful mobile money interoperability (MMI) platform, which integrates all payments platforms across banks, fintechs and telcos, giving access to every Ghanaian to make and receive instant payment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">Ghana\u2019s mobile money interoperability is hosted by a state institution \u2013 Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlements Systems (GhIPSS), headed by Archie Hesse, who was present at the launch of the report in Kigali.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">During a panel discussion, he explained how GhIPSS was able to achieve that level of financial inclusion by integrating three instant payment platforms into what he called the \u201cfinancial inclusion triangle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">According to him, GhIPSS started by first integrating banks to make them interoperable on the back of the GhIPSS Instant Pay (GIP); then GhIPSS introduced a biometric payment system called e-zwich, which was also made interoperable, before moving on integrate the mobile money operators into an interoperable platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">\u201cWhat we then did was to close the triangle by making all the three platforms interoperable to ensure that no matter who is making payment and from wherever, they will be able to do so seamlessly and instantly,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">Archie Hesse said GhIPSS has since improved the services by adding other services like Proxy Pay, Internet Gateway Payment, Request to Pay and the Universal QR Code dubbed GHQR, which can be linked to both bank accounts and digital wallets, with affordability as the key driving force.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">He said GhIPSS, in collaboration with the banks have also come up with a bank-wide wallet called GhanaPay to ensure that the banks also play a role in the mobile money space with the view to bridging the financial inclusion gap.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">Meanwhile, there is still a gap of about 32% in Ghana\u2019s financial inclusion target, but that is not for lack of access, but more to do with education and individuals\u2019 slowness to adoption.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">Archie Hesse believes that with the introduction of GhanaPay, plus regular public education on the advantages of instant payment, that gap will be close.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"background: white; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif; color: #222222;\">He also underscored the importance of fintechs in driving adoption, saying that \u201cfintechs are the ones that will innovate and create services in the areas of insurance, agriculture and others to drive last mile adoption.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Archie Hesse is the head GhIPSS Ghana has been recognized as the only country that has reached maturity stage in access to financial inclusion in Africa.\u00a0 This was contained in this year\u2019s State of Inclusive Instant Payment in Africa Report put together by AfricaNenda and launched at the ongoing Mobile World Congress Africa 2022 in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1234807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[671,1721,85,10419,28035,1110,383,28036],"class_list":["post-1234805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-africa","tag-country","tag-ghana","tag-hailed","tag-interoperability","tag-mobile","tag-money","tag-mwc22"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}