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Mr. Archie Hesse, Chief Executive of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS). Banks are being encouraged to give their customers multiple channels from which they can access the GhIPSS Instant Pay (GIP). This will ensure that bank customers enjoy the full complement of the convenience and speed that come with the service.

GIP is an electronic payment system that allows money to be transferred from one bank account to another of a separate bank instantly. It is the fastest and most convenient way to do interbank transfers. All the major banks in Ghana now offer GIP but while some offer it through multiple channels others offer limited choices.

Mr. Archie Hesse, the Chief Executive of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) in an interview, urged the banks to allow their customers to access the GIP service through their mobile phones, regular internet banking and any other channel that will bring convenience to them.

He explained that with GIP, bank customers can make and receive payments instantly regardless of where they were located. “The world is fast drifting towards the instant pay technology, which fortunately is already live and running in Ghana. The instant pay allows quick turnaround for businesses as they can send and receive money instantly, without having to move from their physical location,” Mr Hesse said.

As vehicular traffic intensifies due to the yuletide, businesses and individuals can resort to GIP to make and receive payments without having to drive through the heavy traffic, Mr. Hesse advised.

He said the GIP can be adapted for several other real time payment solutions. He indicated, for instance that some international remittance agencies were using GIP to remit funds and the money is paid directly into the bank account of the intended recipients.

Mr. Hesse urged the banks to consider various solutions that they can developed based on the GIP service to create convenience for their customer.
He was certain that banks can use GIP to develop a lot more products and use that to attract customers.

There is an obvious drive towards electronic payments in the country. Banks are advertising and encouraging their customers to use their cards, major fuel stations are now accepting cards for payment, while many service providers are accepting electronic forms of payment. At the national level, government is undertaking a number of digitization projects.

Mr. Hesse is hopeful that all these efforts will converge with a critical mass of the population embracing electronic forms of payments and advised businesses and organisations which are yet to invest in electronic forms of receiving payments to do so before they are taken over by events.

Source: GNA

Companies and organisations are being encouraged to use less of cheques and more of the Automated Clearing House (ACH) for payments in the coming year. A statement signed by Mr Archie Hesse, the Chief Executive of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the move to drive patronage for ACH was in line with the global trend towards the use of technology to achieve efficiency.

It said the use of cheques by organisations had been a long-held tradition because they were perceived as a more formal way of making payments. The statement noted that the use of cheques, especially for bulk payments, was cumbersome and inefficient, cost more, and consumed a lot of time that could be profitably used for core activities of the organisation.

“The use of cheques also exposes firms to cloning and sometimes difficulty in tracking cheques that have been issued, but ACH is electronic, quicker, safer and easier to trace,” it added.

The ACH comes in two main forms - Direct Credit and Direct Debit and an ACH transaction takes about 24 hours or a couple of hours in the case of express service.

The statement explained that unlike cheques, which must be individually issued to each recipient, ACH payments could be batched in large volumes and sent electronically at once to several recipients.

“ACH patronage has been rising steadily since its introduction recording over 3.3 million transactions in the first half of 2017, representing close to 48 per cent of clearing house transactions, ‘’ it said.

However a lot of the ACH transactions are of lower values, accounting for less than 20 per cent of clearing house transactions in value terms,” the statement added.

It said the clearing house transactions comprised cheques and ACH and GhIPSS was hoping that its campaign, which had resulted in increased patronage for ACH, would be intensified to see a significant rise in the value of ACH transactions as well.

Source: GNA