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Tigo Ghana is set to pay about GH1million as interest to 1.2 customers of its mobile money service across the country in the first tranche of the electronic money payment.

According to the company, interest payments for about 650,000 Tigo Cash wallet householders have been processed and ready to be disbursed as of Monday, September 12, 2016.

The chief commercial officer of Tigo Cash, Mr. Tara Squire, who said this during a media bringing in Accra, indicated that his outfit would process the rest of the subscribers before the close of the week.

"So far, we have sent interest to half of our subscriber base and we aim to pay over GH1million in the first tranche of the programme," he said.

BoG directive

Bank of Ghana (BoG) has directed talcos in the country to pay interest on the balance of all mobile money wallet holders from the first half of the year.

The first tranche of the payment, which started this week, is for quarter one between January and March and the second tranche for the second quarter spanning April to June this year will be paid in September 18, 2016.

Telcos are expected to pay out an estimated GH12.2 million among mobile money customers int eh first two tranches.

The figure represents 80 per cent of the total interest earned on floats, which were estimated at GH15.2 million as of the end of June this year.

This is in line with the new central banks Dedicated Electronic Money issuers (DEMI) Guidelines which enjoins banks to pay interest on cash flow from the mobile money customers.

The BoG recently approved interest levels of between 1.5 per cent and seven per cent but it was up to each telco to negotiate with each partner bank bank on what percentage of interest they preferred within the given range.

Market leader MTN has already sent out text messages to customers informing them of the payments on the set dates as directed by the Industry regulator, Bank of Ghana.

Airtel and Vodafone have also earlier announced they will make two tranches of quarterly payments in accordance with the directive of the regulators.

Tigo Cash International Buy Airtime
Meanwhile, Tigo Ghana has unveiled its new product "Tigo Cash International Buy Airtime'.

Mr. Squire said, "This innovative service allows Tigo Customers whoa re registered on Tigo Cash to buy airtime for anyone on any network in Ghana and in over 100 countries worldwide."

He added that customers roaming the on Tigo network could equally purchase airtime for themselves and other international networks at no extra cost.