We have become so used to the many digital applications in our daily transactions that we hardly remember how life was before the interventions.
The journey somewhat commenced with mobile money transactions and then the interoperability intervention, the latter sounding at first near impossible.
So easy have the interventions made life that we must congratulate the brains behind the innovations.
For the skeptics, always doubting the feasibility of innovations, the digitisation journey was nothing but a pipe dream, unachievable.
Today, if we are gradually close to managing our daily lives with less cash in our pockets, we should deservingly relish how easy life has become.
Pickpockets are gradually being rendered redundant as people carry little or no cash in their pockets. People can no longer move about with physical cash in their pockets, thereby avoiding the attendant apprehension of being robbed of their monies.
We shall by the growing digital interventions be blazing the trail for others to follow on the African continent.
It is no mean feat to be the first country in Africa and third in the world to launch the Quick Response Code payment system.
Besides all the feats accruing us as a country, the latest milestone is an indicator of the indisputable fact that managers of our governance are on top of their assignments.
Thinking ahead is an attribute of good governance, especially in our circumstance as a developing country with motley of financial shortcomings.
The growth of e-commerce, and the prevention of the spread of diseases such as COVID-19 among others are some of the advantages the Universal QR Code will visit on us.
With 13 banks already onboard, their confidence in it as solid as rock, and some leading telecos such as Airtel-Tigo, Vodafone and MTN on the verge of joining, the light at the end of the tunnel could not have been brighter.
The Vice-President stands tall in all these digital innovations in the country. Of course the Ministry of Communications, the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), telcos and the fintechs, all deserve plaudits for their wonderful role in making what started as a dream to be now operational.
Having reached this milestone, we urge government to facilitate the rolling out of an education programme for the masses to understand and appreciate the subject.
As we compose this commentary, we can bet that only a few Ghanaians understand the subject. Only such an education programme will break it down for them to appreciate and to apply in their everyday lives.
The mobile money transfer mechanism and the interoperability impetus, when they arrived, sounded Greek. Today, the use of the mobile phone for other transactions besides receiving and making calls is a norm among Ghanaians in the remotest parts of the country.
It is our belief that it would not be long before the newly launched Universal QR Code application joins the likes of mobile money or MOMO transfers.
Vice-President Bawumia and the digital team—bravo and more power to your elbow.