As part of activities to climax its Vodafone Cash Month, Vodafone Ghana, over the weekend organised a “Cashless Bazaar” grand sales event in Accra to promote the cashless system of payment and government’s vision of achieving a cashless and digitised economy.The bazaar, which had over 200 small and medium-sized enterprises and hundreds of customers in attendance, was aimed at giving customers and businesses an assurance that they could trade the cashless way at their convenience and safety.
Businesses exhibited products such as clothing, jewelries, cosmetics, food, materials for internal deco, baby skin and hair care products and services such as hairstyling and massaging therapy.
Speaking to the media at the event, Director of Vodafone Cash, Mr Martison Obeng-Agyei, said that Ghana was moving towards a cashless society, which had been a subject of interest to the government and needed support from all stakeholders.
He said Vodafone mobile financial services had enhanced the Vodafone Cash to make the vision achievable, saying, the month of June had been set to encourage customers to do a lot of cashless purchases to move the nation forward.
The purpose, he said, was to convince the populace to understand the need to move into a cashless society for them to accept the electronic payment as a legal tender.
“So if I buy ‘waakye’ with mobile money, the ‘waakye’ seller should be able to buy beans with mobile money, the beans seller should be able to pay the farmer with mobile money and the farmer should be able to pay his children’s school fees with mobile money,” he said.
He said when the loop was closed the money spent by government to print paper money and distribute it coupled with insecurity problems would be reduced.
Mr Obeng-Agyei said, “The vendors after sales could stand here and move their cash straight into their bank account. No one here is guarding a wallet or pot of money. Everybody’s transaction is happening on his or her phone and the phone is secured with them. If they lose their sim cards, they can have them replaced and still have the monies back on their phones”.
As part of the promotion of a digitised and cashless system, he disclosed that, Vodafone has partnered with DSTV to make payment systems easy for customers as well as a food delivery services company called ‘Homechow’ to deliver foods to the citizenry in the comfort of their homes whenever they placed an order.
The Director of Vodafone Cash said businesses have accepted the cashless payment system with Vodafone Ghana as it was more convenient, easy and time saving for them.
Among the businesses that exhibited their products at the bazaar were Spectacular Opticals, Casa Nasari Clothing, Blush Cosmetics, Walking Pretty Heads and Accessories, Kingo Fabrics, A-G Couture Clothing and Jewelry, Carine Shop Underwear, MadebyNanayaa Hair Wig Collections, Gee AAY Beads Collectibles, Regal Impressions Wallpapers, and Sights and Shades Spectacles.
By Kingsley Asare
