The Finance Ministry has hinted to Citi Business News it will soon present the new Payment Services Regulation to the Attorney General (AG)’s Department for further scrutiny.
The Payment Services Regulation is to replace the Electronic Money Issuers (EMI) Guidelines which currently regulates electronic financial services in the country.
“Truly there is a new set of regulation that has to go to Parliament for approval and we are working on it. I know it will get to the Attorney General Department any time from now maybe in about a few weeks,” Nicholas Gyabaah of the Financial Sector Division at the Ministry of Finance told Citi Business News.
The need for a law backed by Parliament has also become necessary following the increased patronage of mobile financial services and concerns on some lapses in the current guidelines.
For instance the Chamber of Telecommunications estimates that the value of mobile money transactions between 2011 and 2015 hit 35 billion cedis.
Between the same period, volume of mobile money transactions and registered mobile money customers reached 267 million and 13 million respectively.
Also, telecommunication companies and financial institutions have mounted strong defences in several instances for stricter regulations to control the mobile financial space.
Commenting on some key aspects the new law will bring on board, Nicholas Gyabaah who is also the the Head of the Bank and Non-Banking unit of the Financial Sector Division explained to Citi Business News the new law will among others regulate the operations of agency banking and issuing of e-transaction cards.
“We are looking at expanding the space; the challenges are that we have a whole segment of the population who are not served by the conventional bank. So we want to open up and one of the issues that we are looking at is to give a space to agents, that is, agency banking,” he said.
“We are also looking at promoting and enhancing the use of electronic money that is the electronic card.”
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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
