NIA explains why some banks don’t accept the Ghana Card

It is commonplace for some banks in Ghana to reject the Ghana card as a form of identity for bank transactions and as such some Ghanaians may be denied financial services.

Head of Corporate Affairs at the National Identification Authority (NIA), Abudu Abdul-Ganiyu, has explained that this happens because some banks do not have electronic verification platforms to verify customers’ identities. Hence, they reject the Ghana card.

He made this known during an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show.

“The NIA’s challenge before was resolving the electronic verification platform problems but that has been sorted. But now everything is dependent on the banks. It is important that they invest in procuring these electronic verification machines so that they have the necessary infrastructure for purposes of verification.”

He, however, noted that some banks such as Fidelity Bank, UBA, Stanbic Bank, and CALBank are now accepting the cards.

The Ghana card registration commenced in April 2019. The exercise was piloted in the Greater Accra Region and later rolled out in the other 15 regions. It was suspended during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic but resumed after the restrictions were eased.

Meanwhile, the government is currently embarking on a SIM card re-registration exercise using the Ghana Card as the only identification requirement.