Dr. Ernest Addison – BoG Governor
Bank of Ghana (BoG) says failure of mobile money loan defaulters to pay would affect their chances of acquired loan in the future.
This follows some individuals who have acquired loans through mobile money platforms, but have deliberately refused to register their SIM cards under the on-going national SIM Card registration exercise, with the intention of avoiding
repayment of the acquired loans.
It is said that over 6 million MTN customers on Quick Loan have not registered their SIM cards.
According to the apex bank, data on all mobile money loan customers are domiciled in the databases of credit
bureaus.
“As a result, failure to repay such loans will attract negative repercussions on borrowers’ credit reports/history and could
subsequently adversely affect any chance of obtaining loan facilities from other financial institutions and credit providers in future.
“Borrowers who have discarded their SIM Cards are advised to contact their telecommunication service providers or respective lenders, to discuss repayment arrangements to avoid adverse information on their credit reports, that could deny them access to future credit facilities,” the central bank warned in a statement released Wednesday 28, 2022 and signed by Sandra Thompson, Secretary of the Bank.
MTN Ghana recently stated that about six million customers are yet to register their SIM cards with the Ghana card.
MTN has urged its customers who haven’t registered their SIM cards to do so ahead of the deadline given by the National Communications Authority (NCA).
The National Communications Authority has given citizens yet to register their sim cards up to the end of September using the Ghana card as the only identification document.
According to NCA, registering SIM cards with the Ghana card will help in curbing fraudulent activities and also protect the sim card data including its transactions. Also, it will help identify legal sim cards of every network.
In a stakeholders engagement held in Koforidua in the Eastern Region, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Mobile Service, Eli Hini disclosed that over 6 million out of the 17 million customers are yet to register their SIM cards.
“As of now the data available indicates that close to 17 million customers have been able to link their cards which means that these customers have their Ghana cards and out of the total number of customers who have their Ghana cards only 10 million customers have gone through the bio- capturing process leaving over 6 million customers who haven’t gone through the bio-capturing process”.