Seeking to become independent from established United Kingdom banks, Ghana International Bank last week announced the availability of a MasterCard-branded debit card in the UK.
Ghana International customers in the UK historically have had to access their account funds using an HSBC cash card through an agreement with that issuer, according to Ian Clowes, managing director and co-founder of Payment Card Technologies. HSBC will no longer provide Ghana with cash cards. Payment Card is a UK-based debit and prepaid card program manager and is providing services such as product development and card manufacturing for Ghana International’s debit card portfolio. It will also assist with customer service.
Ghana International is the first foreign bank in the UK to issue a MasterCard-branded debit card. Metavante Corp. is processing the transactions. The bank was established in the UK in 1959 and is a part of the Ghana Central Bank.
The bank previously viewed debit as somewhat of a risk, according to Clowes. “They are a very conservative bank,” he adds. “There haven’t been many bank in the Sub-Sahara region of Africa that have been very successful, but the Ghana model has worked.”
As a bank that does not lend to its customers, “giving [customers] access to a debit card is an important step up the risk curve in terms of fraud exposure, a 24-hour customer-service requirement, overseas transactions, charge-backs and operational risk,” Clowes says.
Ghana International executives were unavailable for comment.
Clowes believes Ghana International views the debit card as a tool to become independent from larger UK banks. “There is an ongoing trend here where the smaller international banks in the UK are becoming independent,” he adds.
Prepaid cards should be the logical next step for Ghana International, Clowes says. The MasterCard MoneySend service, which enables customers of participating MasterCard issuers to send each other funds using prepaid card accounts, is an option because Ghanian consumers remit more than 1 billion pounds (US$1.57 billion or 1.14 billion euros) between the UK and Ghana each year, according to Clowes.
