MTN launches mobile money month in Kumasi
The Board Chairman of the Yaa Asantewaa Rural Bank, Mr Samuel Addo Otoo has advised financial institutions, particularly banks to position themselves well to take advantage of the mobile money platforms to increase their deposits.
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He said with the increasing adopting of the platform by citizenry there would be the need for the banks to develop innovative ways to cash in on the innovation.
He said it should be possible for customers to make deposits from their phones into their accounts without necessarily having to walk into the banking halls.
Mr Otoo, who was speaking at the launch of the MTN Mobile Money Month in Kumasi, said the platform presented the banks with the opportunity to attract more customers and increase their share of the market.
According to him, per the records of the central bank, only 30 per cent have bank accounts while more than 15 million of the population have mobile phones and out of this number, “at least MTN controls about six million who are on the mobile money platform.”
Mr Otoo said it would not be long Ghana would move towards a cashless society and thus reduce the burden on the central bank of printing currencies.
The Senior Commercial Manager of MTN for the Northern Sector, Mr Peter Bimpeh, said although the initial stages of the introduction of the platform was slow, the last three years have been very encouraging.
“We have seen positive growth and usage of the service for the past three years. Customer behaviour has changed and we are seeing the usage of the more advanced services and several others,” he said.
He said the service currently has six million subscribers using the mobile money services and about 46, 000 merchants nationwide.
He said now shops easily displayed Mobile Money stickers to indicate their acceptance of mobile money acceptance method, adding, “this means that very soon it will be possible to come to town and shop without carrying physical cash.”
Mr Bimpeh assured the customers that the service was safe and efficient as “it is the only Mobile Money service in Ghana that attained the ISO/IEC 27001: 2013 certification.”
He said as a leader in the mobile money and telecommunications sector, MTN was committed to taking bold steps to ensure that “Ghana goes cashless with mobile money.”
Activities lined up for the month-long programme included consumer promotions, merchants and agents promotion and merchant forum. The launch was on the theme: ‘Let’s go cashless with MTN Mobile Money.’