Recently, the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems company stated they were going to reinstate their earlier waived fees for reasons including that the extended fee waiver was affecting them financially.
The Telecommunication networks and some fintech companies are also exploring options to reintroduce fees on all mobile money transactions.
Telecommunications Argument
Although a plan to reintroduced hasn’t been finalized, the Chamber of Telecommunications is planning to meet with the Central Bank to discuss reintroduction of fees because projections by its members to sustain the waiver beyond three months is no longer sustainable.
“We are not even like GhIPPS which projected to use the check clearing house charges to support revenue shortfall; unfortunately for us, the mobile money operators, person to person income forms a huge chunk (about 90 percent) of the revenues that we make,” Chamber of Telecommunication’s CEO, Ken Ashigbey said in an interview.
“What GhIPSS did also impacts on our revenue; the intra transfers among telcos had to be zero-rated, and that also affected GhIPSS. Definitely, this is a conversation that we as well were going to engage our regulators, the Bank of Ghana, to review. So, we are not really surprised at this; it is about the sustainability,” he added.
Fintechs’ Argument
Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Technology, Derrydean Dadzie said fintechs would have to resume their charges to make up for the loss of revenue due to waiver of fees.
“Already, the halting of movement and the restrictions on social gathering are hampering the number of transactions on our platforms. When people move, that is when we see more transactions. We are already challenged with the restrictions and partial lockdown that we experienced, and this is a welcome decision from GhIPSS,” he said.
Source: BF&T
