Ecobank Advocates Enhanced Payment System

Ecobank has advocated collaboration among banking partners and regional financial regulators in West Africa to strengthen the payment system.
Arnold Ekpe, Ecobank Group Chief Executive Officer, stated this at the Inter Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA) Regional Policy Workshop on Payment Systems and Cash Couriers in West Africa.
Ekpe said such collaboration would help overcome challenges like currency convertibility, cumbersome import and export procedures and inadequate information and communication technology platforms that have continued to challenge effective regional payments and trade.
Ekpe represented by Oti Ikomi, Ecobank Group head, Corporate Banking Products, Oti said there is the need for more integrated regional payment platforms, to facilitate trade across ECOWAS and the wider Africa continent.
He said the Ecobank Group Switch (Exchange) is an example of a regional payment solution that has aided the speedy transfer of cash with ease across countries in Africa via the Rapid Transfer Service, while the Ecobank Regional Card makes it easy for payments to avoid cash carrying and obtain cash in local currency at point of need.
Also speaking, Dr. Abdullahi Shehu, the director general of GIABA said there was the urgent need to increase awareness among stakeholders on the problem of cash transactions and cash courier in West Africa.
He maintained that due to problems discovered with the use of cash in transactions over the cause of time, many countries have moved their economies away from the dominance of cash as a medium of exchange to non-cash payment systems.
He reiterated that though cash in form of currencies remain strategically important to trade, they present a unique challenge in the identification, tracking and recovery of laundered proceeds of crime. In his words “in ECOWAS region, cash transactions represent a unique challenge due to the fact that non-cash payment systems are inadequate.”