John Awuah, the President of the Ghana Association of Bankers, has attributed the fees charged for personal transfers to inconsistencies in the data of Ghana card details between Mobile Money (MoMo) accounts and bank accounts.
He explained that if the information registered on a MoMo account differs from that on a bank account, the system interprets it as different individuals and applies charges accordingly.
However, in an interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show (CBS) on Thursday, Mr. Awuah revealed that there is a reversal system in place for these charges.
This system, he noted, is not automatic or immediate, suggesting that customers may have to wait or take additional steps to have the fees reversed.
“The situation we have observed is we have some of these customers who have updated their bank records with their Ghana card. Unfortunately, the details that they have on the Ghana card which they presented to the bank are different from the name combination on their telco wallet. So you may be Bernard V Avle, but the Ghana validation combines both your name and the ID on your card. So the system that does that authentication and if it cannot verify that you are the same Bernard V Avle who owns an account at Bank B then you are likely to have a charge which is a charge that should be reversed.”
“And it is the reversal mechanism that has not been working as seamlessly as we were made to believe when we started this process with GRA. There is a reversal mechanism. It is not automatic or immediate. Sometimes there is a delay in the reversal, and that is where people see some of these charges. It is nothing new,” he said.
Mr. Awuah also stressed that banks had not introduced any charge on personal transfers.
“No bank has introduced any new charge. As far as we are concerned, any new charge (comes with) notification to their customers or a charge which is not so properly advertised in their banking premises, on their websites, and other platforms,” he noted.