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By Marilyn King
The Government of Sierra Leone through the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) will be launching the National payment Switch on 29th April 2023. This was announced in a press conference that held at the Sam Bangura Building on Wednesday 19th April 2023.
The switch is a platform that facilitates interconnection and interoperability between payment channels of various players in financial landscape. These players include commercial banks, microfinance institutions, mobile money operators and host of FinTechs.
According to the Bank of Sierra Leone, all debt and credit cards currently being used, would be used on the National switch. Once it goes live, it will ensure direct transactions between accounts of different banks, direct transactions between wallets of different mobile money operators and bank accounts and settlement of funds for transactions across schemes, between schemes and banks.
The switch makes provision for buyers, users and sellers of financial products and services to make transactions across access channels such as automatic teller machines (ATM) points of sale (POS). The switch will route all transactions irrespective of the cards used to central national payment switch for settlement at the Bank of Sierra Leone.
The national payment Switch which is owned and managed by the Bank OF Sierra Leone will go live on Saturday 29th April 2023 and will be operationalized in three (3) phases. Phase1 card switching, this involves ATMs and POSs interoperability. During this phase, one can conduct transactions on any ATM or POS regardless of the bank card or bank account one has. Phase 2 instant payment, this phase will interoperate Mobile Money Operators (MNOs), other fintech and bank accounts such that customers can make instant payments using any of these facilities from any location. And phase 3 international payments the go live dates of the two phases will be communicated in due course.
The Acting Bank Governor, Dr. Ibrahim L. Stevens, said a lot of payments system infrastructure has been done and new defining era in the national financial services sector, making the attainment of a critical milestone in the economic growth gender with H.E President Julius Maada Bio.
He furthered that the national switch project has a long history in the Bank of Sierra Leone, going as far back as 2011. He noted that when he first came to the Bank of Sierra Leone in 2008, his job was to help The National financial sector development strategy, and part of the strategy was the National Switch. He said the activities at the Bank of Sierra Leone to launch the National Payment switch, goes back at least a decade.
He stated that in 2019 the World Bank provided support to Sierra Leone in financing to the sum of $12M to the government of Sierra Leone for this project which comprises the National switch implementation project, a national financial Literacy project and a rural connectivity project. He furthered that they are in the process of implementing all of these activities and they are starting with the first phase of the National Payment Switch. He continued that as a provider of this payment system, and in order to ensure sustainability, the Bank OF Sierra Leone shall run the operations of the National Switch to begin with. He continued that their operations are sustainable, because it a financial operation. He said members of the payments switch architecture would contribute to the operations of this entity. He furthered that it will be situated within the banking and payment system department at the Bank of Sierra Leone that is run by Mr. Boima the Assistant Director of The National Switch.
