The Ghana card is helping to establish a credit-scoring system in the country that will require that high-risk borrowers pay higher interest rates than low-risk borrowers, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has said.

Speaking at the 2022 Civil Service Awards ceremony in Accra, at which he justified his earlier comment that he would prefer the Ghana card to a 1,000 interchanges, since, in his view, the former would transform the country, in the long-term, the former Deputy Bank of Ghana Governor, bemaoned: “Since I was at the Bank of Ghana, one of the things that kept eating at us at the bank was the absence of a credit system in Ghana”.

“In many countries”, Dr Bawumia noted, “workers don’t have to just live on their monthly pay cheque because there’s a credit system”.

“If you have a regular pay cheque, you’ll be able to get a way to buy a TV or a fridge on credit and all of that but we don’t have a working credit system in Ghana and one of the biggest obstacles to the development of a credit system was the absence of a unique identity”, he observed.

He said: “The Credit Reference Agencies need a unique identity to do credit-scoring so that everybody will know what their credit-score is”.

“So, if you don’t pay your bills, you’ll have a very low credit-score and they will not give you credit. If you pay your bills, you’ll have a high credit-score and you’ll get credit”.

“Now, many developing counties, including Ghana, have not had this credit system because of the absence of credit-scoring but because we have now linked all bank accounts to the Ghana card, you have unique identification for credit-scoring”, he noted.

“Yesterday, I had a meeting with the Credit Reference Agencies, ECG as well as Ghana Water because we want to make sure those who don’t pay their bills on time, it will affect your credit; and that is all of us, I suppose, because that is where you bring discipline into the economy, discipline into the society, but thankfully, in this year, and I know that in just a few months, Ghana, for the first time in our history, we will now begin a credit-scoring system in our country”, Dr Bawumia indicated.

“And, this will allow credit to grow: we can tell who is a risky borrower and borrower; and banks can then give lower interest rates to people who are not risky borrowers”, he noted.

“At the moment, they assume we are all risky borrowers because they cannot tell, we’re not uniquely-identified, so, the people who don’t pay, their sins are visited on all of those who pay, and, so, we now want to distinguish and if you go and commit your sin, you go into hell yourself and don’t take us along with you, so, this is where we are as far as where we are integrating [is concerned]”.

The Ghana card is a valid verification document issued by the National Identification Authority (NIA) to Ghanaians and resident foreign nationals living everywhere for the purpose of identification.

The card bears personal information about the individuals whose identity can be verified at all times. The NIA National Identity System utilises three types of biometric technology for identification purposes.

These are the fingerprints unique to each individual in the form of digitised templates, and facial templates in the form of a digitised colour photo of the cardholder and the iris.

The card contains basic identification information including a photograph of the cardholder, along with a name, date of birth, height, and a personal identification number that has been randomly generated and assigned to the holder and has an expiry date.