Fintech Sector in Ghana: IMT to Wallet by Andrew Takyi-Appiah of Zeepay

Andrew Takyi-Appiah, CEO of Zeepay, shares his assessment of the fintech sector in Ghana and explains what are the latest trends.

“We are in the fintech sector. We are looking forward to using innovations such as artificial intelligence and being able to use AI to manage the agent network to control fraud in the system. We are also excited about the fact that we have the new Payment Systems and Services bill which will bring a lot more clarity and direction to the market which has been long overdue. Congratulations are due to the Central Bank for the wonderful job they have done. We operate in the remittance subsector, which we call “IMT to wallet”. Remittance is basically into the mobile money wallet, bank accounts, and CAD rails. We leverage digital assets to serve the last mile. It is an exciting space today. We have made a lot of social impact. A lot of women, older people, disabled persons, and children are able to access their international remittance directly from their loved ones abroad. Before, there was one person in a single household who would receive funds on behalf of five or ten people. This made the system vulnerable to fraud and many other challenges. Today, senders are able to send money directly into their loved ones’ mobile wallets. The old women do not have to walk 100 km to pick up their cash. More often than not, if you walk out your door there is a mobile money agent to come pick up your cash. These disruptions to the banking system have been very positive because it means that for the first time, you can receive your remittance outside of the banking system. In the past, you could only get your remittance through a bank and you had to visit between the hours of 8-5 p.m. when they were open to get your money. If there was a fund emergency you had to wait until the next day or use Harambee, the illegal black market, to move money around. One of the innovations in this space is the ability to be able to do compliance on a real time basis, screening sanctions, creating last mile opportunities. Here, we have not only created opportunities for last mile to receive money, but now they can do borrowing as well. We have built a remittance purse for our repeat customers. Many of our clients have traffic coming through on an annual basis. One good thing about mobile remittance is that once a customer gets keen on it, it can only grow because it is a continuous experience for them. There are a few challenges across the ecosystem on the continent. For example, the African regulators often do not understand the digital space so it is a bit of a struggle compared to FC in the UK which is building a thriving ecosystem because they have come to understand that this is the future. In Africa, it is still a journey. You see isolated countries like Ghana and Rwanda who want to get this right, but the others are struggling along. Still, we are very optimistic. Every breakthrough in every country is a breakthrough for Africa”, says Andrew Takyi-Appiah.

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