Adopt payment platforms for cost efficiency — AZA Finance
The country manager of AZA Finance, Nana Yaw Owusu Banahene, has advised businesses to adopt 'last mile' payment platforms to prevent transactions from going through multi intermediaries.
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Last mile is the final leg of transaction where payment is made by a customer and received by a business.
This is to help reduce payment costs in transferring money and delay in the supply of goods to unlock growth opportunities and overall financial performance.
The call comes in the wake of the varied complexities and costs associated with the advancement in technology, and its attendant hurdles which continue to plague businesses when it comes to payments.
Particularly in times of severe economic austerity and increased efforts to increase shareholders value by way of profitability, cost efficiency has become a paramount consideration for businesses to maximise their return on investment, maintain a competitive edge and allocate resources strategically.
Speaking at a roundtable and cocktail event last Tuesday in Accra on the theme: “Unlocking Cost Efficiency: Strategies for Reducing Payment Costs for Businesses in Africa,” Mr Owusu Banahene said to reduce manual workload and remove human errors while improving the speed of payments and delivering greater efficiencies, AZA Finance, for instance, was connecting with banks and fintechs not just in Ghana but the African continent.
This is to enable a seamless cross border payment that takes away most of the high costs of making payments outside the country.
The event brought together industry experts to discuss payment costs faced by businesses and explore strategies for cost efficiency.
“Through our web and API platforms, we make it easier for enterprises doing business in Africa.
By leveraging cutting-edge technology with our proprietary technology in our flagship products, AZA Finance is able to significantly lower the cost and increase the speed of payments to, from and across African markets,” he said.
Finance solution
“Payments sometimes go through about seven banks which increase the cost of transfer because of our current operational infrastructure, we have been able to take away some elements of correspondent bank effects and also transactional charges.
This will enable local partners to be able to do these transactions at very low cost going forward,” he said.
Security
He explained that the fintech company provided its technology, infrastructure and operational infrastructure with compliance and regulatory regimes by working with license partners to enable these transactions to happen.
“We are PCI-DSS, ISO27001 and SOC 11 certified, some of the security challenges that happen are more offline and we have a very strong compliance and regulatory framework within that foot,” he added.
The Executive Secretary for the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana, Samson Asaki Awingobit, stated that payment costs posed a major challenge for businesses across industries as they directly impacted the profitability and financial health of these businesses.