Ghana to soon become one of the PayPal-compliant countries

desmond frimpong

May 14, 2018 8:49 PM

The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and other commercial users, for which it charges a small fee in exchange for benefits such as one-click transactions and password memory.

Discussions have been finalised by stake holders to make Ghana become one of the PayPal-compliant countries.

The Vice President of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, made this known at the launch of the first phase of the first Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) Payments System in Accra on Thursday.

Paypal supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like cheques and money orders.

The West African country Ghana will plunge into the Paypal system by the first half of 2020.

This online money transfer development forms part of Government’s ongoing efforts to build a new and modern economy.

Paypal says Ghanaians merchants should be able to receive payments for their goods sold online by the second half of 2019 and in 2020 consumers should be able to make payments for goods and services purchased online via Paypal accounts.

The online money transfer system when fully executed will largely eliminate the difficulties associated with traditional banking services.

Difficulties in opening bank accounts, the high costs associated with maintaining a bank account relative to customers’ income levels, the need to have basic literacy, administration and record keeping abilities and English-language capacity to operate a bank account, and the sheer intimidating nature of banking halls.

According to Dr Bawumia about 60 per cent of the Ghanaian population was unbanked.

This high unbanked population, Dr Bawumia said, meant that so much money and savings were held outside the banking system and he believes there had been no access to payment instruments other than cash for transactions as most alternative payment instruments were bank-based.

desmond frimpong