The recently appointed CEO of the Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlements Systems (GhIPSS), Clara Arthur has declared her commitment to ensure that Ghana’s celebrated instant payment system goes from its current progressed inclusivity stage to the matured level of inclusivity next year.
She made the declaration during a panel discussion session at the launch of the State of Inclusive Instant Payment Systems (SIIPS) Africa 2025 Report, after Nigeria had been declared and celebrated as the only country whose payment system has reached the matured level of inclusivity.
Per the SIIPS metrics, matured inclusivity stage means a payment system has expanded use cases, affordability, and most importantly an in-built reliable dispute resolution mechanism.
Nigeria’s InterBank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) finished last year at the progressed stage because it had everything but lacked a dispute resolution system. But it has since established one to ensure that customer and other stakeholder complaints are resolved speedily.
Meanwhile, Ghana’s GhIPSS, which was the first to reach the progressed stage at the launch of the maiden edition of SIIPS report in 2022, has since remained at that stage because there is no clear path to a speedy dispute resolution backed by clear regulatory directives and standards in the system.
Clara Arthur noted that her predecessors did great by taking Ghana to the progressed stage of inclusivity, but now it is time to put in the last piece of the puzzle to ensure that Ghana’s payment systems ensure absolute inclusivity by making provisions for speedy dispute resolution.
The GhIPSS Instant Pay (GIP) and the Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) systems already have expanded use cases and affordability, because now the two platforms allow all to all payments, and it is also affordable as transfers are free for users because the switch gets paid by the partner operators.
The GhIPSS CEO told Techfocus24 in an exclusive interview that the way forward to matured inclusivity stage is for Ghana to fix the messaging standard in the instant payment ecosystem. She explained that “we need to migrate our instant payment rails from the current ISO 8583 model to the ISO 20022 because that is the future of real-time payments.”
ISO 20022 is an open global standard for financial information. It provides consistent, rich and structured data that can be used for every kind of financial business transaction.
According to Clara Arthur, ISO 20022 is the new standard that governs instant payments, and allows open APIs to drive easy connectivity for all financial service providers.
She believes that once that standardization transition is achieved, it will drive the kind of innovation among both fintechs and banks, and that will surely put Ghana on the path to reaching the matured inclusivity stage next year.
“It is part of my strategy as CEO of GhIPSS to implement these measures immediately to create the opportunity for new use cases in Ghana,” she said.
Touching on measures for dispute resolution, Clara Arthur noted that currently the norm is for the customer to first go to the service provider and make a complaint, and if the service provider fails to resolve the matter within a stipulated period, usually ten to 15 days, then the matter can be escalated to the regulator for resolution.
She however noted that to ensure efficiency and public trust, GhIPSS will work with the Bank of Ghana to make the path clearer to ensure that disputes are resolved faster and if a service provider fails to meet deadlines the whip will be cracked because ultimately, the intent is to ensure public trust in digital payment systems, and delays in dispute resolution could be counterproductive to that goal.
Clara Arthur also used the opportunity to advise consumers to always stop for a minute and pay attention to recourse mechanism for every digital financial service they patronize, and not wait till there is problem before they begin to look for solutions.
