RSwitch Ltd, the company which operates Rwanda’s electronic payment switch, recently appointed a new Board of Directors. The board is led by Tongai Maramba, the Strategy and Operations Manager at Meta Connectivity and a former chief executive of Tigo Rwanda. Other board members include Tony Francis Ntore, the CEO of Rwanda Bankers’ Association, Marie Jeanne Munezero, a Legal Reform and Revision Analyst at the Rwanda Law Reform Commission; Ginger Baker who heads Financial Access at Plaid and served as Visa Managing Director for Rwanda; Robert Kayinamura, CEO of QT Global Software limited and Jean Claude Gaga representing Airtel Rwanda. According to Mathieu Rwiyereka, Ag. Chief Executive Officer of RSwitch, the new board comes after the Government of Rwanda’s investment to increase the payment operator’s capacity in serving the financial services market with the best solutions after the Covid-19 pandemic. The company then opted to build strong governance, hence appointing the Board of Directors and obtaining regulatory approvals by the Central Bank. He noted that the board is constituted with renowned and trusted experts in the business, from different sectors such as banking, fintech and technology enablers making the industry RSwitch serves. The company was established in 2003 with a vision of connecting all East Africans with all their e-money by delivering interoperable solutions using the best payment technologies. Primarily, RSwitch offers interoperable transaction processing services through its flagship payment solutions SmartCash (payment cards scheme) and eKash (instant payment system scheme for mobile banking), as well as Third Party Processor services for Visa, Mastercard and UPI. It provides a full set of services including cards issuance, management, terminal driving, monitoring and enables electronic payment clearing, settlements, interoperability across all financial service providers in Rwanda and beyond. It is PCI DSS and PIN SEC certified. “Technology spreads to people through different mediums including Cards, ATMs, POS and other ways like Apps, USSD or Internet banking,” said Rwiyereka. “Those are some of the ways we use to link banks and ensure that all Rwandans are secure and have trust in their digital money instead of handling cash physically. It is beneficial to them because exchanging money electronically is easy, secure, and fast, the economy is also boosted at the end.” From October 7 to 8, RSwitch hosted board consultation meetings where the Board chairman and members met key industry stakeholders to hear from them and understand what their priorities and expectations towards the board for consideration in their strategic and governance role for RSwitch Ltd to the financial services industry in Rwanda could be. According to Rwiyereka, the board met and consulted the Governor of the National Bank of Rwanda, the Minister of ICT and Innovation, the CEO of the Bank of Kigali, MTN’ Mobile Money Rwanda Ltd and Zigama CSS as well as other institutions to make sure they don’t leave any priority behind. He said the sessions gave them hope that there is a will to develop e-payment in line with Rwanda’s vision, adding that the board got productive and fruitful feedback and priorities it is going to use. RSwitch is highly grateful and appreciates contributions made by the industry. RSwitch currently operates and manages eKash scheme, an interoperable mobile instant payments Switch (Rwanda National Digital Payments System). Through the scheme, they recently facilitated interoperability between Airtel Money and MTN Mobile Money where users are now able to send money to each other through the company’s system from May 26 2022. Rwiyereka said they started with wallet to wallet (mobile money accounts) but are also working on the next service which is sending from wallet to bank accounts as well as between a bank account and another. eKash will also expand to business, government as well as banking agency payments. “That will be done between a person and another person, a person and a business (merchant payment) and later, a person and the government and vice versa,” he said. “The uniqueness of this project is that payment will be done in not more than 20 seconds and the money will be able to be used in those seconds unlike before when it was difficult.” Rwiyereka also declared that the project is serving as a central point to link an institution with another hence it is no longer necessary for an institution to make big investments or even negotiate how its interoperability with another institution will unfold because RSwitch does so on its behalf seamlessly. “Among the investments that were needed include network channels between the institutions undergoing interoperability where you would find one having like 50 channels,” he continued. “With our project, an institution will only need to have connectivity with RSwitch and the company will connect it with another institution. It’ll take them much less energy and that reduces service fee which is one of the key goals of the project. Hence, delivering on instant, affordable, and inclusive payments.”
