MPs summon ICT Minister over payment interoperability

The Chamber of Deputies has resolved to summon the Minister of ICT and Innovation to provide strategies for expedited implementation of the interoperability technology project. The project intends to address the challenges existing in the transactions between banks and other financial institutions as well as telecommunication companies to make payments more seamless. Transaction interoperability allows customers of different financial service providers to exchange financial transactions with each other, for example by making direct transfers from the mobile money account of one provider to a wallet of another provider, or to bank accounts and vice versa. This is one of the resolutions made by the plenary sitting of the Lower Chamber of Parliament on Tuesday, May 17, 2022 as it adopted its Committee on Economy and Trade’s analysis of the 2020-2021 annual activity report of the National Bank of Rwanda. “The Committee found that the payments between banks and other financial institutions and telecommunication companies – payment interoperability – has not yet been improved,” said MP Théogène Munyangeyo, Chairperson of the Committee on Economy and Trade. According to the Central Bank’s Interoperability Policy of 2014, the interoperability of payment instruments for common use cases within defined payment streams is a key means to providing greater access to electronic payments since it may lead to simplifying business transactions, promoting greater efficiency, effectiveness and convenience and availability of instruments to businesses and individuals in Rwanda. Without greater interoperability, the Central Bank said, it will likely be more expensive and difficult for individuals and businesses to use electronic financial services in ways which lead to the reduction of the use of cash and paper-based instruments over time. Meanwhile, the Committee exposed that there are still some challenges to technology-enabled payments. They include low knowledge in terms of using technology in payments. Also, this involves the transaction cost that has to be incurred, which some residents have not yet understood. “The electronic transaction cost, consisting of the fee charged to the buyer and the seller, makes people prefer to use cash in making transactions,” Munyangeyo said. Another challenge is that some residents do not own mobile phones, which hinders the country’s bid to eliminate the use of cash among its residents. Also, there is low trust of digital payments especially because of the cyber money theft that has been identified in recent periods. Deepening capital markets The Lower House also wants the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to show how the sensitisation is done to make known to many residents the investment trusts such as the Rwanda National Investment Trust Ltd’s Iterambere Fund, and Aguka Unit Trust Fund of BK Capital and to reinforce them. At the same time, the Lower Chamber of Parliament said, the move is aimed to increase the number of individual investors in the Rwanda capital market. “There has been weakness in the capital market authority and the Rwanda Stock Exchange. It is obvious that they have not been able to encourage people to make savings through the stock market,” Munyangeyo said, indicating that the focus should be put on attracting more individual investors to the trust funds.

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MPs summon ICT Minister over payment interoperability