Barring any unforeseen circumstances, public sector workers in the Greater Accra Region would by August receive their salaries via the E-zwich service.

This would constitute the first batch following a successful pilot among staff of the Controller and Accountant General for over a year now. 

According to the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems, the Bank of Ghana’s directive for all commercial and rural banks as well as savings and loans companies to make E-zwich services available at all of their branches by the end of this month should set the tone for a smooth take-off. 

The Chief Executive, Archie Hesse explained to Joy Business: “We’ve had a pledge from the Controller and Accountant General saying that we know the system, we’ve tried it and we like it. However the bank branches were either not offering the E-zwich services – that is the services were not consistent". 

"So if such problems are fixed it would be rolled out beginning with the Greater Accra region and since the directive was issued, we’ve seen a remarkable improvement. We’ve had a lot of banks coming in for either new Point of Sale devices or old ones to be repaired as well as lots of training requests to re-train bank-tellers to offer the services whilst the Controller and Accountant General is also putting things in place”. 

He added that the roll out should cover the other regions by the end of the year.   
“The amount of work that needs to be done before payments can be done especially when you have run a pilot is the same to be used. It would involve individual civil servants going to their banks to request an E-zwich card and communicating the card number to their HR Departments and I’m sure the Controller and Accountant General would give them a duration to do that.

The Controller and Accountant General would subsequently choose other regions where the same process would apply. As far as we are concerned, there is no reason this cannot be concurrent or go nationwide because the key is for the rural and commercial banks as well as savings and loans companies to be offering the E-zwich services,” he concluded.