Nine banks in Ghana have completed the integration of their information technology systems, enabling their ATMs to accept each other’s cards across the country, Archie Hesse, the CEO of Ghana Interbank, Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), has revealed.
The banks include Ghana Commercial Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Agriculture Development Bank, Zenith Bank and HFC Bank. Others are United Bank for Africa (UBA), UT Bank, Prudential Bank and the Bank of Africa.
Aimed at enabling the banks to provide banking services to their customers at an increased speed, the new development allows customers of the banks to access their bank account and to make withdrawals from the ATMs of any of the nine banks.
According to Hesse, four more banks, Ecobank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Unibank and Energy, will soon complete the process.
Since the completion of the integration, Hesse noted that there has been an increase in the number of users utilizing the system.
“We notice that the take up has been rising and it is obvious that the public is on board. Until now, only customers of banks which issued Visa branded cards could enjoy that service,” he said.
Hesse described the ATM integration as just one of the series of new services to be launched on the gh-link.
The focus will now shift on enabling the use of regular ATM cards on Point of Sale (POS) devices, he said.
Ghana’s ATM users have described the interoperability of the local ATMs as “the realization of a long held dream prior to the creation in 2007 of the GhIPSS by the nation’s leading bank – the Bank of Ghana.”
