The General Manager of Cellulant Ghana, Eric Kotey, has underscored the need for a further reduction in the rate of the Electronic Levy (E-levy).
Earlier this year, he said the government listened to the plight of Ghanaians and reduced the E-levy to one percent. He, however, insisted that the current rate is still high and should be reduced further.
He argued that a further reduction of the levy is imperative to get more people to accept digital payments.
“If we want to increase digital payments in the country, there is still the need to reduce the E-levy further and when this is done, it will impact the level of adoption we want to achieve,” he said.
Mr. Kotey spoke in Accra during a Momo Stakeholder Forum organised by MTN on the theme ‘Addressing Barriers to Digital Payments Adoption in Ghana’ and said high transaction charges remain the major barrier.
Despite the benefits that come along with the adoption of digital payment systems, he lamented that most people, especially in the rural areas, are not encouraged to use it because of cost. “When transaction fees are fixed in favour of rural communities, it will boost the adoption of digital payment systems.”
He advised mobile money operators (MMOs) to collaborate with Fintechs to augment their efforts in supporting the digitisation drive.
“As aggregators, the truth of the matter is that, whatever price we are being given, we are also going to mark up. So if the MMOs reduce their prices, we will also reduce the cost of our services and doing this would help the whole ecosystem. So we are pleading with the MoMo stakeholders to do everything right for us to grow digital payments,” he said.
Responding to how MTN would approach pricing in the subsequent years, Sylvia Otuo-Acheampong, Head of Product and Services, Mobile Money Limited, said the plan is to move from the initial peer to peer (P2P) pricing system to partnership payments, where merchants will get more benefits
In achieving the afore-mentioned, Ms. Acheampong explained that her outfit is looking at dynamic pricing from multiple angles, such as tier or volume based.
One major solution to the barriers of the adoption of digital payments that was stressed by all speakers at the forum is education and the need to use local languages on digital payments platforms.
The Head of Fintech and Innovation at the Bank of Ghana, Kwame Oppong, noted that a company’s investment in retention would always pay dividends if the consumer is well-educated.
