Accra, Ghana//-Eli Hini, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MobileMoney Limited (MML), the MTN Ghana subsidiary responsible for mobile financial services, has disclosed that the company is reviewing its policy directive of No Valid ID, No Mobile Money (MoMo) cash-out transactions in the country.
“We are currently reviewing the policy to see how best we can implement it to ensure that the larger of our customers are included.
It is not proper to exclude anybody from accessing financial services. So those are some of the decisions that are ongoing”.
We are engaging the regulator-Bank of Ghana as well to make sure that we can work together to give the best to our customers”, he explained to African Eye Report at the launch of the ninth edition of MoMo Month in Accra.
The enforcement of the policy which commenced on 2nd April this year, has so far contributed to the significant reduction of the MoMo fraud on the MML platform.
Without a valid ID card, MoMo transactions cannot be processed. Customers are expected to present any of the following ID cards -Ghana Card, Driving License, Passport, Voter’s ID, and NHIS. Also, SSNIT card is permissible for cash-out transaction(s). But it can’t be used for SIM registration.
Directive enhances customer identification
Besides the significant reduction of MoMo fraud, Mr Hini noted that “the implementation of the directive also helps our partners who are the MoMo agents to be more in tuned with the people that they are dealing with”.
Therefore they are able to tell who is in front of them, who is performing the transaction? So that issues that come out of that transaction are very clear because the agents know who came to do the transaction, they are able to identify the person, he stressed.
But Mr Hini said: “Except that we also received reports from the media and some of our stakeholders that that particular directive is also impacting access to the service. Because people have genuinely lost their IDs in different ways are not able to access the MoMo service”.
So as we speak, part of the consideration is looking at the process and how to make it better because we do not want a situation whereby the policy is impacting the adoption of the service”.
MoMo services
MobileMoney Limited which was the first to launch mobile money operations on July 21st 2009 has just finished celebrating its 10th anniversary in the West African country, in 2019.
Launched with two main services namely Money Transfer (P2P) and Airtime Purchase, the platform now has six major categories of financial transactions under which varying services are provided.
The services are pensions, insurance, savings, micro loans, shopping, payments, international remittances and banking/investment options.
Additionally, the MML has partnered with several organizations to rollout key social empowerment projects over the decade including helping digitize the Agriculture Value Chain through mAgric, POS in partnership with several banks and scaling up female participation within the MoMo merchant space.
Indeed, almost all the products and services of financial technology (fintechs) platforms in the country are powered by MoMo payment systems.
African Eye Report
