Kofi Ahovi

 Businesses trading between Ghana and China stand to benefit from faster, more convenient and potentially cheaper payments following the introduction of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) in Ghana, the Chief Executive of Stanbic Bank Ghana, Kwamina Asomaning, has said. With CIPS, businesses can access a more direct payment route to Chinese counterparties, reducing the need for US correspondent or intermediary banks,” Asomaning said at the Ghana-China Day in Accra on Wednesday. CIPS, he explained, gives businesses a more direct route to settle eligible transactions in Chinese yuan (RMB), cutting their reliance on correspondent and intermediary banks. CIPS is a wholesale payment system authorised by the People’s Bank of China that facilitates payments in RMB, providing an alternative channel for businesses engaged in Ghana-China trade. According to Asomaning, payments between the two countries had traditionally passed through intermediary banks, including US corresponde...

Kate Agamah, Head, Transaction Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, Stanbic Bank Ghana. Every exporter or importer who has waited for days for a payment to clear or watched a shipment's margin erode to a currency conversion, understands the truth that policy documents rarely capture: trade doesn't fail at the border. It fails in the payment. Goods can move freely across a continent, but if the money behind them takes a week and three intermediaries to arrive, that freedom means little. This is the quiet problem Ghana's next phase of trade growth depends on solving, and it's why two systems with unglamorous acronyms, CIPS and PAPSS, deserve more attention in boardrooms than they currently get. The Cost of Doing Business Across Borders For years, Ghanaian businesses trading internationally have leaned on correspondent banking networks, chains of intermediary banks that route a payment from one currency system to another, usually settling in US dollars regardless of...