Ethiopia’s national Electronic Fund Transfers has seen interest from a dozen international information technology companies and their domestic partners.
The switch system for the national EFT is a technology that will allow customers to transact money from nearby ATMs with payment cards from any bank that is part of the system by centralizing the card payment system of all banks linked to the national payment system of the central bank explained Bizuneh Bekele, General Manager of EthSwitch SC.
EthSwitch was established last year with an initial capital of 80 million birr equally contributed by all banks operating in Ethiopia. The board of the company is chaired by Berhanu Bekele, General Manager of United Bank.
The company reviewed bids for technical proposals for the supply and implementations of the national electronic funds transfer switch and related systems from a total of 13 IT vendors.The evaluations might not all be completed in the first phase because the project is very complex explained Bizuneh.
Evaluations will be carried out by a committee of four representing EthSwitch and three banks. The documents will be categorized in two tracks with the first track comprising of two lots to develop software for switch clearing, fraud and dispute management for network infrastructure and the supply of card for issue. The second track will include card management systems.
Efforts amongst private banks to establish similar systems will be complementary to the national system Bizuneh.
Source: Addis Fortune
