Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said that the successful implementation of the Mobile Money Payment Interoperability by the government has made about 15 million Ghanaians essentially bank account holders.
Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) is the service which allows direct and seamless transfer of funds from one mobile money wallet to another mobile money wallet across networks.
Whiles the Vice President was addressing the youth wing of the New Patriotic Party in Accra, he explained that with the triangular feature; that is the transfer of funds from mobile money accounts to bank accounts and vice versa, as well as from mobile or bank accounts to biometric payment card accounts (ezwich), suggests that anyone with a mobile account has a bank account.
“It means that anyone with a mobile account has a bank account… They can make payments out of it and receive interest on their balances.”
Dr. Bawumia also noted that:
“Many people did not and do not understand that we have moved away from the world of branch banking into branchless banking. You can have your bank account on your phone. You can do banking without visiting a bank branch or signing a cheque.”
Moving on, he further stated that Ghana is the first and only country in Africa to achieve mobile money interoperability. In effect of this achievement, this has made Ghana, now the fastest growing mobile money market in Africa.
In 2019, mobile money transactions amounted to GH¢32.8 billion, representing a 215% jump in two years. The total number of transactions recorded under mobile money as of December 2019 was 200 million with that of banks pegging at 599,000 million (just about 3% of the mobile money number). Currently, over 15 million people now have mobile money accounts in Ghana.
“Many people, did not and still do not quite understand what I meant when I said every eligible Ghanaian will be able to get a bank account. They were thinking about traditional bank accounts. Well, I can say without any fear of contradiction that as a result of mobile money interoperability over 15 million Ghanaians today (many of whom are unbanked in the traditional sense) have a bank account. This is a remarkable achievement and shows the power of digitization,” Dr. Bawumia added.
