The payment systems industry appears to be the biggest beneficiary of the government’s digitization drive agenda, as the industry continues to make massive strides.
The last four years have seen the government roll out some digital initiatives such as the National Digital Property Addressing System, the introduction of paperless port operations, the integrated e-immigration system, e-procurement, e-parliament, e-justice, e-cabinet and smart workplaces, the Rural Telephony Project, the development of an interoperability system to integrate government database, and the mobile money interoperability.
These initiatives have given a shot in the arm to payment systems in the country, with the latest data from the Bank of Ghana indicating that registered mobile money users shot up from 32.5 million in December 2019 to 38.5 million in December 2020. This shows that over the past year, a total of 6 million people have signed on to enjoy mobile money services in the country. This culminated in a year-on-year increase of 18.5 percent.
Active mobile money accounts have also increased from 14.5 million in December 2019 to 17.1 million in the same period last year. Active mobile money users have therefore gone up by an 18 percent margin.
The rise in the number of registered accounts and active users reflected in the value of mobile transactions over the period. The total value of transactions rose from GH¢32.8 billion in December 2019 to GH¢67.7 billion at End-December 2020, an expansion of 106 percent.
The growth of money penetration in the country is phenomenal and plays a very significant role in Ghana’s quest to achieve nation-wide financial inclusion.
In May 2018, the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GHIPSS), a 100% subsidiary of the Bank of Ghana, launched an interoperability platform, one of the first such systems in Africa, intending to foster the expansion of mobile money services in the country.
Two years after the implementation of the mobile money interoperability platform, the total value of transactions as of December 2020 stands at GH¢1112.2 million. Mobile money interoperability has gone up by 742.6 percent, up from GH¢132.0 million in December 2019. An increment of GH¢980.2 million.
The other payment platforms have also seen significant expansion over the past year. For instance, the Total Transaction Value of E-zwich transactions rose from GH¢763.8 million to GH¢882.8 million. Enrolment has also increased from 3.1 million in December 2019 to 3.3 million the same month last year.
Also, the Total Transaction Value of the Gh-link increased to GH¢41.5 million in December 2020 from GH¢29.9 million in December 2019.
The GHIPSS Instant Pay (GIP) has also seen an expansion in the total value of transactions from GH¢315.1 million in December 2019 to GH¢1511.1 million in December 2020. This also reflects the rise in the total number of transactions from 361 thousand to 963 thousand.
The recent expansion in the use of ICTs across the various sectors of the Ghanaian economy shows that the government’s digitization agenda is fast yielding its intended results.
“We are also modernizing, digitizing, and formalizing the economy. One of the biggest issues confronting our economy as with many other developing economies is its highly informal nature, along with the manual bureaucratic and cumbersome processes involved in the delivery of government services” .
Dr. Bawumia
The Digital Ghana Agenda seeks to digitize Government services, build a biometric National Identity register, deploy a digital property addressing system, mobile money interoperability, and institutionalize paperless port operations among others.
The digitization agenda anchors firmly on the spread, integration, and utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to automate public and private sector operations, enhance Ghana’s economic competitiveness with the rest of the world and improve upon living standards of Ghanaians.
The National Communications Authority (NCA), the regulator for the electronic communications sector, has a key role in creating the enabling environment for the ubiquitous deployment of ICTs to facilitate the digitization of the economy.
The Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Communications is playing a pivotal role in the development of a robust framework to support the digitization of the Ghanaian economy in a manner that captures and benefits every citizen.
