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The Ghana Banking Awards has adjudged Zenith Bank and GCB Bank as the Cashless Promotion Bank of the year and the e-zwich Bank of the year respectively. The two banks were recognized for their efforts at driving cashless and e-zwich services during the prestigious banking awards held on Saturday 15th July in Accra.
The awards, which is in its 16th year, was instituted by Corporate Initiative Ghana, constituted by corporate bodies in Ghana. It is intended to recognize performing banks in different categories and engender competition among them.

A few years ago, a category to reward banks that promote e-zwich was introduced and another to recognize banks driving the cashless agenda was added a year after.

The two award categories promoted by the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems Ltd (GhIPSS) was in line with the general policy to promote non-cash forms of payment in Ghana.

Competition for both awards was keenly contested, with Standard Chartered Bank and Royal Bank being adjudged the first and second runners-up in the category of cashless bank promotion award while Agriculture Development Bank (adb) and Access Bank were the first and second runners up for the e-zwich Bank of the year category.

The Chief Executive Officer of GhIPSS Archie Hesse commended the winners of the various categories and urged financial institutions to continue to work with GhIPSS to drive non-cash forms of payments.

He explained that the banks are in a very advantageous position in the cashless agenda, as they have both merchants and individuals as customers. He said banks can work with their customers who are merchants to enable them to offer electronic payment channels, as well as use incentives to encourage consumers to patronise the electronic payments.

Mr. Hesse also urged government to come out with policies that will reward financial institutions, that are promoting non-cash forms of payments. He said some progress was being made and added that with a concerted effort by all stakeholders, Ghana could achieve the cashlite agenda.

Source: GNA

Enrolment of enterprises and individuals to offer e-zwich services is underway in major towns in the Brong Ahafo region.  The move is to make e-zwich services available to as many people as possible.

A team from the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) is presently in the Brong Ahafo region and will enroll agents in Sunyani, Brekum, Techiman and Goaso. Madam Gertrude Ati who is leading the GhIPSS team, said every effort was being made to bring e-zwich services closer to the people.

She said besides creating convenience for the public, the creation of e-zwich agents also presented business opportunities to the prospective agents. So far over 300 agents had been set up nationwide and GhIPSS hoped to add another 60 from the Brong Ahafo region.

The team from GhIPSS would visit other regions to set other agents up.

Apart from the agents and banks, some ATMs are being converted to accept e-zwich cards. This is evident by the fingerprint readers on the ATMs.  “e-zwich hasproven to be efficient and cost effective for companies which had employees dotted round the country. The card’s ability to work offline also makes it extremely useful in rural areas where network connectivity is a challenge,” she said.

Patronage of e-zwich services had gone up following its usage by both private and public sector institutions to pay various forms of emoluments. The volume of transaction between January and March this year was a little over 2 million compared to about 750 thousand transactions during the same period in 2016, according to the first quarter performance report by the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems Ltd. (GhIPSS).  This represent a growth of 170 percent.

The report also indicated that the value of transactions was up at over 655 million Ghana Cedis in the first quarter of the year compared to 428 million Ghana Cedis for the same period last year. Following the increased usage of the biometric smartcard, GhIPSS had been training and setting up agents.

e-zwich cardholders can go to these agents to withdraw, transfer or load cash onto their cards and the agents would complement the financial institutions who until this initiative, were the only providers of e-zwich services.