National payment system for Ethiopia
EthSwitch was formed by all the banks in Ethiopia with the backing of the Ethiopian Bankers’ Association and the country’s central bank, the National Bank of Ethiopia. Following the implementation of the full SmartVista suite, all the banks’ payments are now centralised.
The key aim of the project was to bring interoperability to the country, as a result of which, clients of any Ethiopian retail bank may access services via all the ATMs in the country for cash withdrawals; make point-of-sale (POS) payments in any terminal; and utilise cheque balancing.
With SmartVista as the core of the whole system, it has also enabled smaller banks to issue and acquire cards on their own and also benefit from outsourced processing.
Ato Bizuneh Bekele, CEO of EthSwitch SC, said, “All connected member banks now benefit from interoperability as well as providing a new level of convenience and access to Ethiopian citizens, merchants, and organisations. The Ethiopian financial ecosystem will find new levels of efficiency, availability and accessibility, while also significantly reducing the levels of cash usage.
“Currently the system integrates over 1500 ATMS, over 13,000 POS terminals, and 2.5 million cardholders all over the country. These numbers are expected to grow further due to the ease of use to banks' customers and hence the demand that the interoperability will create. We aim to use this foundation to launch further e-payment services so as to bring about greater financial inclusion to Ethiopia,” added Ato Bizuneh.
“We are proud to help drive such a vital project for Ethiopia’s national economy. For the first time all the retail banks in the country are switched to our single processing platform acting as the central core for payments in the country. With interoperability delivered for the first time, this will see transaction volumes continue to grow, benefiting consumers, banks and merchants,” said Daryl Berg, MD BPC Banking Technologies, Sub-Saharan Africa.
