Consumers of financial services will from October this year be able to use their payment and debit cards on any Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) and point-of-sale device nationwide irrespective of one’s parent-bank, the Chief Executive Officer of GhIPSS Mr. Archie Hesse has said. This has become possible as a result of a new system, dubbed GH-Link, which is expected to interconnect banks and build an efficient financial and trading platform. As such, all ATMs across the country as well as new ATM cards are expected to bear the GH-Link logo from the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) from October this year. Mr. Hesse explained this to the B&FT on the sidelines of the third CEOs Business Breakfast Forum held in Accra. The cost of using the platform is expected to be determined by individual banks during the piloting phase this month, while negotiations are on-going with banks for a flat-rate. E-zwich and ATM cards will continue to be used as normal during the piloting phase. Under the current arrangement, ATM and e-zwich cardholders can only use their cards on ATMs of parent-banks and designated point-of-sale devices. Consumers of the product have complained about their inability to use their e-zwich cards on any ATM, irrespective of the bank. The introduction of the new system is expected to remedy the situation and provide the convenience of nationwide access as well as greater control over transactions for cardholders, retail merchants and corporate users. E-zwich is a smart-card payment system introduced by GhIPSS in April 2008 as an innovative method for improving accessibility to banking and retail services in Ghana. The e-zwich system offers deposit-taking financial institutions a platform that enables them to interoperate. This enables e-zwich cardholders to perform banking and retail transactions at the outlets of other e-zwich financial institutions, and e-zwich point of sales terminals. More than half-a-million people have the e-zwich cards, and the system continues to register more users.