Patronage of electronic payment records 81% growth in first quarter

The use of electronic payment channels continue to experience impressive growth in the country, as more people turn to those forms of payments.

Latest figures from the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) show that the use of electronic payment channels that go through GhIPSS platform, went up by 81 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.

The total volume of transactions in the first quarter of this year stood at over 13 million compared to about 7.2 million transactions in that of 2019.

The Chief Executive of GhIPSS, Mr Archie Hesse described the growth as a important indication of how people were gradually embracing electronic payments.

He noted that consistently the volume of electronic transactions were growing year after year and expressed the hope that the mandate to migrate Ghana into an electronic society was getting closer and closer.

GhIPSS recently added Proxy Pay and universal QR code to its plethora of products and intends to add some more.

These should further increase the volume of electronic transactions, while reducing cash transactions.

The transactions captured in the GhIPSS product performance report for the first quarter of 2020 include; electronic clearing of cheques, Automated Clearing House (ACH Direct Debit and Direct Credit), e-zwich and gh-link.

The rest are GhIPSS Instant Pay and Mobile Money Interoperability.

While the total volume of all the transactions put together went up by 81 per cent, specific channels such as GhIPSS Instant Pay saw a huge growth of almost 700 percent, while Mobile Money Interoperability grew by over 350 percent, in the first quarter.

It is anticipated that the month of April may experience a further growth in the volume of electronic payment channels following the fallouts of the coronavirus disease and the increased campaign by banks encouraging customers to patronise their digital payment solutions.