Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) has rolled out a bank-wide mobile money service to individuals and businesses. The GhanaPay service, which operates like already existing mobile money services, with additional banking services, is opened to everyone with access to a mobile phone (including a yam phone) with or without a traditional bank account.
GhanaPay can be used to send and receive money to and from mobile networks and bank accounts. It can also be used to cash in and cash out, buy airtime, and data, and also pay for goods and services through a GhQR merchant.
The banking association’s representatives stated that one of the biggest challenges that they faced as a country was the large unbanked population. For a long time, over 70% of the adult population was unbanked. However, thanks to reforms in the payment channels, they have significantly reduced the unbanked population.
Commenting on the development, the country’s officials stated that GhanaPay takes care of the bottlenecks associated with the opening of formal bank accounts, so the banks should be able to use the GhanaPay platform to reduce the traditionally unbanked population.
The service can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or from the Apple Store.
