The Co-operative Credit Unions Association of Ghana (CUA), the umbrella body of more than 500 co-operative credit unions, has launched and is set to operate and manage its own multi-tenant digital payments platform, known as CUANet.
The formal launch of CUANet took place during the 20th Educational and Biennial Conference of CUA, which had as its theme “Five decades of sustainable credit unions development: new image, new direction”.
The CUANet project is in line with CUA’s vision to provide financial and technical products and services to its members. It is also aimed at promoting financial inclusion and electronic payments, by bringing convenient, secure, reliable and easily accessible banking services to the doorstep of its members.
Nana Kwasi Agyepong, Group CEO of CUA said, “The mobile banking platform which we have just launched is only the first phase of the CUANet project, and we are very excited about it because going forward, CUA’s mobile banking services are going to be at par with those offered only by the big multi-national banks.
“CUA has a strategic vision of leveraging technology for social change, and I’m pleased to say that CUANet is one big step in that direction.”
The CUANet platform is built around a digital service hub, which hosts each credit union as a tenant allowing each credit union to manage their own services, business rules and customer services on the platform. Additionally, for the second phase of the project, CUANet will be integrated to multiple merchants, remittance houses, billers, and banks in Ghana.
The service supports multi-channel access including USSD, kiosks and ATMs. It also supports NFC and QR scan-pay transactions. Built on a PCI/DSS certified infrastructure, Master/Visa/Gh Link card services will be soon added to the service bouquet as optional transaction channels.
Nana Kwame Agyemang-Duah Mensah, Head of IT at Digital Square, mentioned that his company has been working with the CUA management for over two years to get the CUANet project off the ground.
“This project is a highly flexible and scalable one. It was designed from scratch and developed based on the specific needs of the members of CUA. Our choice of PayNet Systems Pvt of India as our technology partner, was based on their high regard for security, service level guarantees, knowledge of collaborative financial services, and experience in launching similar services in Asia”, he said.
Speaking under the topic “Digital financial services in credit union sustainability”, Tushar Belwal, co-founder and CEO of PayNet Systems stated, “We would like to thank CUA and Digital Square for trusting us in delivering CUANet. PayNet is proud to have been a part of this project, and the entire team looks forward to playing a formidable role in the financial inclusion movement in West Africa being pioneered by the CUA leadership”.
GTBank, the 2017 and 2018 award winner of “Best Digital Banking: Ghana” – as per Capital Finance International of the UK’s award scheme – is the official partner bank of the CUANet project. Its core mandate is to facilitate all payments and settlements on the CUANet platform.
