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The 2020 presidential candidate for the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Percival Kofi Akpaloo has condemned the decision of the Bank of Ghana to make the Ghana Card the solely required document for bank transactions.
He believes that fingerprints should be used in situations where a client fails to produce a Ghana card physically or the identification number considering the fact that the National Identification Authority (NIA) already has the biometric data of the individuals who registered for the Ghana cards.
The Bank of Ghana on July 1, 2022, directed that all mobile wallets and banking accounts be integrated and synced into the country’s biometric personal identification document.
By syncing banking and mobile money platforms into the country’s biometric personal identification document, the reserve bank of Ghana was essentially seeking to ensure that all activities can be verified by the National Identification Authority systems.
BoG noted that integration of banking, telecom, and mobile money into the Ghana Card will make transaction tracking seamless. This comes as cases of fraud involving mobile money platforms are on the increase in Ghana, with statistics from the cybercrime unit of the Ghana Police Service showing over 300 reported cases in 2019.
But for Kofi Akpaloo, denying an individual from performing transactions at the banking hall without carrying the Ghana Card or identification number is baseless and must be condemned.
He buttressed his point that once the biometric is already synchronised on the NIA data the transaction must be allowed to take place smoothly even without the Ghana Card on person.
“That is where I have an issue, if the card that contains the biometric information of our hand and eyes… so if you go to the bank and you do not carry the card with you then they must be able to verify your details on their machines.
“The process of using the fingerprint I think it is needless, because if they have already synchronised the system with your information from the NIA then they must record report from the NIA which has no need of fingerprinting again,” he said on Angel FM.
Meanwhile, he has urged the public to commit their identification numbers to memory for easy access to services, should they for any reason not have their cards on them physically.
“We must encourage people to memorize the Ghana Card numbers. And is not in all circumstance you may carry your identification card along. You can just mention your number and you are good to go,” Kofi Akpaloo told Kwamina Sam Biney
