Ecobank Ghana launches unified electronic payment solution for merchants

Ecobank Ghana has introduced Ecobank Pay – a multi-featured digital payment solution, to boost digital payment in the country.

According to the bank statement, the product delivers a unified and instant self-service payment solution to more than 15,000 merchants – a product that allows anyone to buy a product or service without physical cash.

According to the  Group Executive of Commercial Banking at Ecobank Ghana, Josephine Anan-Ankomah at the launch of the Ecobank Pay Zone said, “It’s basically a QR code that we deploy at merchant sites; anybody who sells anything qualifies to have an Ecobank Pay deployed in that place.”

Ankomah added, “We want banking to be something you do and not a place you go to so we want to kind of decentralize it and make it available to everybody in the street so we have collaborated with merchants, with pharmacies, with shops where you can go into that place and deposit money and cash money out of your account just like you will do at a branch; you load cash on it which is linked to your account, you scan the QR code and the payment leaves your account and goes instantaneously into the account of the merchant.”

Also the Head of Transaction Services at Ecobank Ghana and Anglophone West Africa, Stephen Kemetse, said the bank has deployed its digital services to Osu and making it a Pay Zone for commercial purposes.

Osu Oxford Street is the latest to receive the Ecobank Pay Zone putting the number at 8 in the whole country.

Speaking on the rationale for developing the solution, the Regional Head of Consumer Banking at ECOBANK Ghana, Tara Squire said the initiative seeks to complement the government’s efforts to drive the country to a cash-lite society.The 2017 Global Findex Database has revealed that seven million Ghanaians do not have a bank account; indicating the country’s formal banking industry is still struggling with the challenge of decreasing the unbanked population.

The Ecobank Pay, however, can be used by all businesses from small informal micro merchants to large corporates as well as governments, allowing them to offer easy and convenient payment options to their customers in-store or online.