Ecobank to drive cashless transactions
Ecobank Ghana is to kick start a campaign that will complement the government’s efforts to promote a cashless economy, through its new product, Ecobank MasterPass Quick Response (QR) code.
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The product, which was developed in partnership with Mastercard, is a merchant solution to accept payment for goods and services from any mobile device. It also allows consumers to receive instant payment on mobile devices and eliminates the cost of handling physical cash.
The Managing Director of Ecobank Ghana, Mr Dan Sackey speaking at the launch on Wednesday March 15, 2017 said the product was designed to support the bank’s retail structures on a mobile device.
“This system brings huge benefits to the merchant since it eliminates related fraud issues, cash shortages and frequent trips to the bank. In the future, customers can make payment with their mobile money account which would not require any Ecobank account but for now we would start with the bank account,” he said.
Mr Sackey said sales executives of the bank would visit merchants with the MasterPass sticker in the coming weeks, a move he described as important, to provide records for small scale merchants without bank accounts to improve their businesses.
“The mobile device now becomes a bank account which is more secure, safe, gives instant response and greater reliability,” he said.
Transactions
He said that on a daily basis customers can spend up to GHC5,000 per transaction and a total of GHC20,000 per day.
He said, “We believe that this amount fits in the average lifestyle of the consumer because most payments are for smaller purchases and would not exceed the limit”.
He added that the cost per transaction was free as such no charges were made on any transaction made by the consumer.
He stated that the main aim was to bring together both purchase and payment into one simple transaction which woud eliminate the need to visit the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) frequently.
Process
The Regional Manager for consumer distribution, Mr Owuraku Asare stated that the QR code should be linked to an existing Ecobank account which is secure with a personal identification number (PIN)
He said that customers were required to download the Ecobank mobile app on smart phones to give them access to scan the QR code.
Mr Asare added that scanning the code would allow customers to key in the amount per the transaction.
He said that merchants should have MasterPass stickers with QR codes in order to receive instant payment into their account.