The General Manager of Mobile Money Limited, Eli Hene, has told Accra-based FM that MTN Ghana has decided to extend the intended date on which MoMo users will be required to present a valid national ID for mobile money transactions.

He said the implementation date has been moved from February 1, 2021, to April 1^st 2021.

According to the telecom giant, the move forms part of efforts to reduce cases of mobile money fraud.

In Ghana, mobile money has opened access to financial services for millions of people leading to the strengthening of the payment ecosystem and the deepening financial inclusion in the country.

MTN’s Mobile Money service is the most preferred option for most mobile money users but increasing cases of mobile money fraud on the network has forced the company to come up with stringent measures to fight the trend.

The telecom giant announced that from February 1, users of their mobile money service would have to show a valid identification card whenever they visited a MoMo agent to make a transaction.

However, MTN has decided to move the date to April 1 before rolling out this policy.

The Ghana Card, Driving License, passport, voter’s ID, SSNIT ID, NHIS are the valid Identification cards sanctioned to be used for transactions by MTN Ghana effective April 2021.

MTN says when an agent is performing a cash-out for a subscriber, the agent is required to select the ID type and enter the ID number on the ID card the subscriber provides.

Although this is not a new initiative, it has not been strongly implemented for some time and MTN believes its enforcement will be effective in dealing with mobile money fraud which has become more rampant in recent times.

Mr. Eli Hene said the extension of the implementation date will allow its mobile money agents to be given more sensitization.

He added that the extension will make the general public more capable of helping MTN to adequately deal with cases of mobile money fraud.

“That timeline will now be first of April for full implementation because we are trying to give adequate time to ensure customer education has gone to all the areas of the country”.

He explained that the enforcement of the requirement will also help the company deal with issues of fraud.

“It’s not a new requirement it’s just that it has been very lax. Typically if you look on all our posters we have put it there clearly at the agent point that all transactions should come with IDs but over the period a lot of our agents have lax that unless you go to our branches and our key stakeholder points that’s where they enforce it and what is coming out is that most customers would rather avoid those places and go to where IDs are not demanded, and we have realized that is also impacting on the fraud issues as well, and we needed to step it up.  We are now doing it on a system level, so the system is now demanding the agent to make that as part of the transaction process, it’s to help us also deal with our fraud issues that have become very much of a challenge”.