UEMOA to interconnect 80 banks

The interbank money Group of the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA-GIM) will interconnect about 80 banks of this monetary zone by the year 2009. This revelation was made on Monday in Dakar by its director general, a native of Benin, Blaise Ahouantchédé.

Mr Ahouantchédé explained that "the new system will allow, for example, a client from any bank of  the group to make all his operations in any other bank connected to the network . “The client simply needs to acquire our interbank money group credit card", he said. "The credit card,” he went on, “allows the settlement of all financial operations in the established banks of the sub-region with an electronic payment terminal that displays the logo GIM-UEMAO," said Ahouantchédé.

As regards the reliability and safety standards of the credit card for the UEMOA interbank connection, Blaise Ahouantchédé assured that clients have nothing to fear about. "The new card meets the current standards in industrialized countries, especially the EMV standards (Europa, MasterCard and Visa)," he added.

So far, 17 banks in the sub region are interconnected, and forty others expected to be connected by the end of 2008. "We need to go step by step in establishing our interbanking devices," said the Director General of GIM-UEMOA. He also assured that clients will enjoy all judicial guarantees endowed with the system. "We guarantee all our operations. Our institution has an alert mechanism within the security system operations which is monitored in a dynamic manner", he said.

Blaise Ahouantchédé recalled that the idea is to transform financial transactions in the UEMOA zone through a decisive move onto the electronic wallet to help reduce or even eliminate risks associated with banking transactions with the traditional system.

"The benefit is that the client no more loses money as he no longer needs to travel from one country to another with a suitcase full of banknotes. A simple card is enough for his operations," said Blaise Ahouantchédé, who is also chairman of the Regional Committee for the fight against fraud banking and cyber crime.

UEMOA zone counts about 80 million people and comprises eight countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Togo and Senegal.