The Bank of Ghana (BOG) is finalising plans to enable the government to make all payments for third parties and other government agencies, through the SWIFT system.

The government’s payments, through the SWIFT corporate’s platform, would eliminate paper work and inefficient manual procedures.

The Bank would proceed to effect these payments as the requests are received, Advisor at the Central Bank, Mr Nicholas Okoe Sai, disclosed at the second SWIFT Business Forum for the West African Monetary Zone.

Consequently, the BoG is in the process of electronically linking the Ghana interbank payments system with the Central Securities Depository (CSD) with the objective of achieving delivery versus payment through straight processing.

The forum, which is being held on the theme: “Building on Regional Integration to Deliver Excellence in Customer Service,” would discuss what has been done so far towards the West Africa Monetary Zone project and also explore the challenges and opportunities that regionalisation represents for financial institutions and corporates.

The Forum would also focus on how SWIFT’s new Sanctions Screening Service could help banks to meet the growing regulatory requirements concerning sanctions, and a series of chat rooms that would give customers an opportunity to find out how SWIFT products and services could help business.

The SWIFT system, he noted, had solidly stood behind the Bank in its quest to put in place a payments system infrastructure aimed at facilitating timely and secure payment which will eventually lead to greater economic development while meeting international best practices.

The Forum highlighted the successes chalked under the WAMZ Payments System Infrastructural Project which aims at building a viable payment system to facilitate payments to foster greater regional integration.

It also provided a platform to discuss how SWIFT Sanction Screening Service could help banks to meet the growing regulatory requirements around sanctions, as well as how SWIFT products and services could help businesses.

He underscored the significance of measures to minimise money laundering, financing of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction within and across national borders, noting that the Financial Intelligence Centre of the Bank had, in 2011, issued the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Regulation which required institutions to screen financial transactions to identify potentially doubtful or unusual transactions in an effort to improve the banking environment in respect of Anti-Money Laundering/ Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT).

The integrated system would greatly improve funds liquidity in the financial system by making available to participants, intra-day facilities backed by their security holdings.

There are also plans to integrate the Ghana National Switch to sub-regional switches while efforts are made to promote mobile banking as a payments mode of choice to deepen financial inclusion.

Mr Sai asked the Central Banks in the West African sub-region to find innovative ways to reduce cost, especially in the case of low value transactions, and gain from increased volumes.

He said investment in the WAMZ integrated payment system would not yield the desired results if the unbanked were not brought into the financial system.

The SWIFT messaging system will be used in the West African sub-region to settle payments, the end result of which will be the reduction in the payments cycle and the elimination of paper work and inefficient manual procedures.

Mr Alain Raes, Chief Executive, EMEA, SWIFT, said SWIFT was providing technical and logistics support to the six central banks in the WAMZ to enhance the payments delivery system.