John Awuah, Chief Executive of the Ghana Association of Bankers
• The Ghana Card will soon become the main ID document for bank transactions
•John Awuah said the rollout of the measure will commence in the coming weeks
• He said further discussions are ongoing to ensure that the Voter ID card joins the host of other ID cards
The Ghana Bankers Association has disclosed ongoing discussions with stakeholders to allow the ‘Ghana Card’ to be recognised as the primary identification document for financial transactions in the sector.
According to Chief Executive of the Association, John Awuah, a third-party provider along with the National Identification Authority will ensure the rollout of the system in the coming weeks.
“The national identification card is coming on stream and in the background, we are working with the National Identification Authority and the third-party provider of that system to ensure that we can have a parallel system where over the coming weeks, you will hear that you can go to a bank with your National ID card, and you can be positively identified,” John Awuah told Citi Business News monitored by GhanaWeb.
“Once that comes on stream and the parallel phase runs out, by the law that set up the National Identification System, that becomes the primary form of identifying customers for banking transactions and then as banks, you will have no choice but to comply,” he added.
Already, the new voters ID card is not being accepted by banks and to address this, John Awuah disclosed that further discussions were ongoing to ensure that the Voter ID card joins the host of other cards accepted by banks and other financial institutions.
“The point is that, the voters ID card is one of the many cards accepted by banks for financial transactions. Unfortunately, since we came up with new cards, the third party that has a relationship with the Electoral Commission to have that database refreshed or updated so that banks could positively identify customers who produce voters ID cards for banking transmissions, that kind of discussion has not been concluded,” Awuah explained.
He continued, “It is sad that as banks we do not have a say in that discussion because we are not a party to that deliberation. The message I want customers to know is that, if you go to a bank and your voter’s ID card is not accepted, it is not because the bank doesn’t want to accept it but because the bank has no mechanism for authenticating the new voter ID cards.
“Can you imagine if somebody presents a card to conduct a transaction and then on the flip side you find that the card is a duplicate or something else, we don’t want to be in such a situation? We do these things to protect our customers, and we hope that they will bear with us during this time where (that) we are going through the process of integrating the new voters ID card into our operations for identifying customers,” he concluded.