• For transfers, merchant payments and bill payments
• 24 hours a day, 7 days a week within the UEMOA zone
• See you on July 22, 2024
LThe pilot phase of the UEMOA inter-operation instant payment system will be launched on July 2, 2024. According to the BCEAO, which gave the information on June 20, in a press release published on its website, this “decisive step reflects the BCEAO’s commitment to setting up an interoperable instant payment system, operational continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, capable of processing transactions of all types, regardless of the type of account.”
As part of the promotion of access of the populations of the UEMOA to financial services and in view of the growth of innovative electronic financial service offers, the BCEAO initiated a project for the interoperability of digital financial services to support the walk.
The vision of the Central Bank, through this project, is to “provide UEMOA with an infrastructure facilitating instantaneous “account-to-account” transactions between financial service providers (banks, decentralized financial systems, electronic money establishments). ), regardless of the type of account (bank, non-bank), instruments, services and payment channels used. The platform will be managed by the Central Bank. It complements the Union’s payment infrastructures, namely the gross settlement system (STAR-UEMOA), the interbank automated clearing system (SICA-UEMOA) and the regional electronic payment system (GIM-UEMOA).
Promoting interoperability should make it possible to achieve objectives such as reducing the cost of transactions for the customer, by pooling the processing costs of interoperable services; securing the mechanisms for clearing and settling inter-network transactions; and diversifying the offering by extending financial services to all types of accounts and acceptance networks.
Concretely, the implementation of this platform will make it possible to offer a wide range of services, “aimed at simplifying users’ daily transactions and stimulating financial innovation”, continues the press release from the Central Bank. Thus, with this system, whether the account is held with a bank, an electronic money issuer, a microfinance institution or a payment establishment connected to the interoperable system, users will now be able to make transfers and payments to the account of their beneficiaries, even if the financial institution of the beneficiary is different from that of the sender. Funds will be received instantly and available immediately.
The BCEAO will centralize user account identifiers
According to the Central Bank, the system will also offer a shared service for alias management and identity verification. Aliases management in the interoperable system is centralized. Centralized management consists of creating, in the interoperable system, a centralized basis for storing the aliases of service users. The role of the central system is to guarantee the uniqueness of aliases and to facilitate identity verifications prior to the initialization of transactions by clients. However, the choice of type and the creation of the alias remain the responsibility of clients and participants.
“Best practices recommend the implementation of alias identification for instant payment systems. Aliases are account identifiers that allow individuals and businesses to carry out transactions without needing to know the bank account information of the payee. Two types of aliases are retained in the interoperable system: the telephone number and the payment address. The telephone number has advantages in terms of use, given the wide adoption and convenience it presents in financial services,” explained the BCEAO in its Request for Proposals No. DP/Z00/DBA/026/2023. It should be noted that each alias is linked to the customer’s information, their institution and their account. A good reason therefore for banks and financial institutions to accelerate the digitalization of their services.
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The list of use cases and payment methods
Lhe interoperable system processes the following types of services: – transfers (instant transfer by alias, instant transfer by account, transfer processed by the system between clients of the same bank, transfer processed by the bank between its clients, etc.); – merchant payments and invoice payments (payment by static QR Code, by dynamic QR Code, etc.).
