The Group Head for Personal Banking of Access Bank Ghana, Mr Samuel Abban has called on banks to help drive the cash-lite agenda with initiatives that will help promote the use of mobile money.
“Is it not costing us much as a country to be printing the currencies such as GH¢1 which an e-money equivalent of that same amount could be made. There is the need to understand what cashless really means going cashless whether there would still be cash in the system or none at all,” he said.
He said mobile money was one of the means to push the cash-lite agenda, explaining that Ghana had an enviable mobile penetration in Africa and almost every adult in the country had a mobile phone which made it easy to push the cash-lite agenda in the country.
Integrate mobile money
Mr Abban further called on telecommunication companies to integrate the mobile money platform with their SIM cards.
“Communication networks in the country should integrate mobile money on their sim cards before customers purchase them to relieve the stress of buying the sim card and going back to register for mobile money. This would mean that every customer of a communication network would automatically be registered on the mobile money platform,” he said.
He added that another initiative was drive to utilisation or activation, where banks would add mobile money as another product for customers when opening savings accounts.
“This would get more people to be registered on mobile money which would get more people to utilise mobile money,” he said.
He congratulated MTN on coming up with an innovative idea such as mobile money which is currently a house hold name and also helping in the cash lite agenda.
Challenges
THE General Manager in charge of Mobile Financial Service of MTN Ghana, Mr Eli Hini, said mobile money had provided its consumers with various services such as money transfer, international remittances, insurance,online purchasing,Dstv bills and other related bills.
He emphasised that mobile money had become an option for the unbanked in the society,and has resulted in the growth usage of mobile money services.
Mr Hini explained that with the issue of customer protection, the service had been secured because all transactions made with the services were recorded and could be traced to the time and place the transaction took place.
“MTN mobile money would be launching a new service which would allow consumers buy treasury bills with their mobile money wallet,and also provide a code that would enable consumers report MTN mobile money merchants that are charging higher prices than the provided list for transaction,” he added.
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