AFRICA’S FIRST: Ghana’s identity card is now a bank: Africa watches – and should act
GHANA has done what financial inclusion advocates have demanded for a generation: it has collapsed the identity card and the bank account into a single piece of plastic - and, in doing so, become the first African nation to embed a sovereign payments system directly into its national identity infrastructure, cutting out the US-based card duopoly of Visa and Mastercard in the process. The National Identification Authority (NIA) this week confirmed that the electronic wallet feature of the Ghana Card is now live. Cardholders can activate the e-wallet through the MyCitizens App or by dialling *402#. Once activated, the card…
