The Director and Head of the Payment Systems Department at the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Amediku Settor has entreated commercial banks in Ghana to embrace and work with the Pan African Payment Settlement System (PAPSS) to enhance payments while boosting intra-Africa trade.
“I encourage all banks to take the necessary steps and be on the platform. It will give you additional income. Don’t rely on only corporate and retail banking that we know traditionally. The world is changing and it will never wait for us,” he told representatives of banks and other financial institutions at the PAPSS roadshow organised in Accra last week.
The long-serving Dr Settor maintained that Banks play a crucial role in trade by proving financial services to businesses, therefore, financial institutions must adopt the commercial bank settlement models to ease the stress businesses go through when it comes to access to finance.
Recalling the history behind the evolution of mobile money and financial technology companies and initial push back by the banks, Dr Settor advised acceptance of change, when change beckons.
“When change comes let’s all accept because even in the human race, you are born, you crawl, you stand on your feet then you walk before beginning to ran amidst tripping and falling, he stated.
PAPSS is a cross-border, financial market infrastructure, enabling payment transactions across Africa.
Dr Settor explained that banks need to diversify their sources of income and not only focus on revenue generated from corporate and retail banking.
He called on all banks that are not on board PAPSS to join the train, saying “what you need to do is to write to us at the payment system department. We will review your request and let you go ahead.”
Dr Settor warned, “ I don’t want to hear some banks saying that ‘PAPSS is benefiting bank A B C D, can Bank of Ghana come up with a policy to level the playing field…”
Head of Product and Business Development at PAPSS, Monica Oraro told this paper that consumers or customers stand to gain by way of lower costs, speedy transactions and swift validation of client information.
“Making payments through PAPSS is considerably lower than what else is on the market today; secondly payments go in a very timely way, some of the transactions we’ve done so far we have seen that it can be between 7 and 20 seconds,” she argued.
Madam Oraro said the patronage of PAPSS had mostly had to do with trade transactions and also capital market transactions.
She disclosed that “we have had investors in Nigeria investing in the Ghana Stock Exchange making their payments through us, we have also had a number of entities that are doing exports being able to make their payments through PAPSS.”
Chief Executive Officer of PAPSS, Mr. Mike Ogbalu III said “ with the coming of the African Continental Free Trade Area, it became clear that we as a people needed a payment system that we as a people can control and govern however the existing payment system far from supported Africa’s trade, hence the introduction of PAPSS.”
