Ghana will roll out a new method of payment using universal QR codes later this year, announced Vice President Bawumia.
During the closing ceremony of the 2019 Diaspora Celebration and Homecoming summit in Accra on Saturday July 6, the vice president announced the news of the next step towards the government’s digitisation developments.
The Ghana Diaspore Celebration & Homecoming Summit 2019 has been organised to inaugurate the contributions to fortifying the nation, and to draw attention towards current contributions as well as broaden political and economic advocacy, and all other systems and laws that would ease and invite future contributions by the Ghanaian Diaspora.
“This year, there’s going to be also a remarkable introduction into Ghana of a universal QR Code for payments,” said Vice President Bawumia.
“This will help us move further into the cashless direction because there will be no longer any need for merchants to have point of sales devices, with the QR Code platform. All they need is a mobile phone and even a ‘yam phone’ will work.
“With your mobile phones, you can make payments and it goes straight to the bank account of the merchants and, if all goes well, Ghana’s universal QR Code platform will be introduced by the fourth quarter this year,” Dr Bawumia added.
The universal QR code is the first inter-operable method of payment to be introduced in the world. It allows customers the opportunity to conduct business transactions easily, and more importantly, digitally, reducing the technological difficulties one would come across when operating a cash-lite society.
Using the universal QR code, merchants will be able to receive digital payments without the use of point-of-sale devices.
In 2018, Singapore made the move to introduce universal QR code platforms. Other countries which have recently adopted this method of payment also include India and China.
