Ghana will play host to the first conference on biometric smart card next Tuesday when experts on payment systems from the continent meet in Accra to deliberate on the relevance of the system.

The conference, jointly organised by the Energy Design Assistance Program Tracker (EDAPT) and Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) is christened ‘EDAPT User Group 2016,’ and it will delve into the biometric payment technology and speak to its benefits.

EDAPT evolved from Net 1 and is a leading provider of payment solutions and transaction processing services in a number of emerging economies.

The company has been working with GhIPSS on a number of payment system projects.

The Chief Executive Officer of GhIPSS, Mr Archie Hesse, said in an interview that the conference would serve as a platform to exchange ideas on the payment transformation agenda.

He said the effort to migrate Ghana onto an electronic payment regime was on course and urged players in the financial sector as well as businesses to recognise that the future for payment was electronic and not cash.

Experts have argued that the biometric payment technology is most suitable for the African Continent due to its peculiar characteristics.

Ghana is a pioneer in the deployment of this technology using e-zwich which has tremendously helped deepen financial intermediation particularly in peri-urban and rural communities.

In Ghana, e-zwich has witnessed increased usage following government’s decision to use it to pay National Service personnel, beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP), school feeding caterers and student loans among others.

A number of corporate entities are also using the biometric payment system to pay their contract staff.

The latest benefit from the e-zwich technology is the biometric search technology which is used in cleaning payrolls.

As Ghana and other African countries work towards a cashless economy, discussions at this conference are expected to shape strategies going forward especially regarding biometric technology.