An Interoperable Payment Platform and its Impact on Economic Development

1. An Interoperable Payment Platform and its Impact on Economic Development International ICT Conference, Kabul, Afghanistan September 24 - 26

2. The Cash Problem!

3. The Cash Problem! • Cash is not cheap: • Production • Transportation • Maintenance • Security • Health issues • Counterfeit money Issues • Smuggling of Cash • Corruption….

4. Afghanistan is a Cash intensive society – Public and Private • Almost all transactions are handled in Cash • Purchases, Money transfers, Bill payments, Taxes, Customs in Duty, Public transportation, Health services, ……

5. Statistics of the Financial Industry • Total Number of Banks – 16 • Banked Population: Less than 3% of 29M people • Active Mobile Money Users: Close to 7000 (1 Million registered) • Total Number of ATMs: Apprx. 100 • Total Number of POS: Apprx. 300

6. Key Factors of • Lack of security • Lack of trust in the banking sector • Lack of market awareness about banking services and its reach • Lack of a shared interoperable local payments infrastructure

7. Technical Issue • Closed Loop Systems • No unified platform • Customer is not the customer of the industry but of one institution

8. How do we address this? • Shared interoperable Payments Infrastructure - The Afghan financial services sector and the Afghan economy as a whole will benefit significantly from the existence of an efficient non-cash national payments system

9. Benefits • Cost efficient operating environment • Common payments standards • Tighter risk controls • The achievement of significant economies of scale due to the elimination of multiple incompatible payment systems and operating platforms at individual bank level • Plus eliminate all associated issues the comes with Cash!

10. Thank You