The National Communications Authority (NCA) of Ghana will introduce a Quality of Service (QoS) Regulation, 2019 which will outline quality of service regulations for digital financial services.
Schedule VI of the draft is dedicated to QoS regulation on mobile money and other digital financial services.
Ever since the introduction of Mobile money in Ghana, there has been no quality of service regulation for the format. Currently, all quality of service issues concerning mobile money is referred to Bank Of Ghana.
The NCA has deemed it necessary to incorporate a quality of service regulation for mobile money because it runs on the platforms of the telecom networks.
Quality of Service Parameters For Digital Financial Service (DFS)
Under Schedule VI, the new draft Bill, which has been named Quality of Service Parameters For Digital Financial Service (DFS), there are three main propose regulations for digital financial services.
- The first regulation requires service providers to ensure 100% money transfer success rate.
- The secondly regulation said the time between when money is transferred and when it is received by the intended recipient should not be more than five seconds.
- The third and last regulation is about failed transaction resolution time, and it said that in case of a failed transaction, the service provider had six hours from when the sending wallet was debited to resolve the problem and ensure the intended recipient’s wallet is credited.
Failure to meet the money transfer success rate and money transfer success time would attract a fine of not less than 4,200 penalty points from the defaulting operator.
If an operator fails to resolve a failed transaction within the stipulated six hours, the operator would have to compensate the respective customer(s) with 4,200 penalty points for every additional hour the problem remains unresolved.
According to the Fines (Penalty Units) Act of 2000, Act 572, one penalty unit is equivalent to one-third of the current minimum wage, multiplied by 30. The current minimum wage is GHC10.65 – one-third of that is GHS3.55 – that multiplied by 30 is GHS106.5 – multiply that by 4,200 and the amount comes to GHS447,300.
Key Highlights
The NCA said it will conduct regular surveys to determine the extent to which telcos meet the benchmarks and apply the necessary regulations to whip them into line.
The draft regulations, when approved for implementation, would also enjoin telcos to notify customers of any planned service disruption three clear days ahead, and also inform customers of any service outage within one hour of its occurrence, or face sanctions.
Per the draft regulations, in the event of a service disruption, telcos would be required to provide customers with detailed information on the affected service, period of disruption, reasons of disruption, areas of disruption, possible effects on customers and the estimated time for service restoration.
They are required to do this via SMS, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), at least one state-owned newspaper, local radio stations in the affected areas (including GBC Radio) and Television (including GBC TV Stations).
