Financial institutions are urged to prioritize user authentication while utilizing the Ghana Card for all transactions by the National Identification Authority (NIA).
The appeal was made by Professor Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah, the Executive Secretary of the NIA, at National Identity Day, which was held to promote awareness of the value of legal identity in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 16.9 of the United Nations.
Implementing this technique, according to Professor Attafuah, will be crucial in reducing the industry’s escalating fraud instances.
“We have unbounded all the 25 universal banks and 125 rural banks, all the telcos. All these institutions are properly positioned to verify identification, verification is the confirmation that the right thing has been done.
“That is why the banks must verify. The banks failed to verify the identities, simply make a photocopy of the person’s ID Card, they lost 162
If the banks had confirmed, $1 million in fraud would not have occurred, according to the Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority.
On Monday, September 4, 2023, the NIA started Phase II of the registration process for new Ghana Cards applicants.
This comes after the NIA cut off the registration process’ initial phase, which was intended for those employed by the government in the public sector.
The NIA attributed the first round of registration’s cancellation on the public sector employees’ underwhelming turnout.
In a statement, the NIA stated that phase I was calculated using data from the Controller and Accountant General’s Department, which estimated that between 250,000 and 260,000 Public Sector Workers did not have identification cards.
