Liberia: African Development Fund grant to modernise payments infrastructure and systems

The African Development Fund’s Board of Directors has approved $3.9 million grant to finance upgrade of Liberia's payments infrastructure and systems project.

The approval of the grant from the Bank’s concessional lending window, was made on 17 March. The project’s primary objective is to strengthen the payments ecosystem in Liberia for increased efficiency and to foster growth and innovation. It targets the automated cheque processing and automated clearing house (ACP/ACH) and real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems, which form the backbone of payments  processing in the country’s financial sector.

The project will also involve the upgrade of the Central Bank of Liberia’s main data centre and disaster recovery sites and is expected to impact the institution and government ministries involved in payments. Other beneficiaries include commercial banks and their customers, all of whom will experience improved services and turnaround times, real time processing and online administrative access.

The project will also contribute to increased inclusion and fostering of regional integration through technological upgrade to required standards.

For Liberia, this initiative will directly impact the roll-out of the proposed National Electronic Payments Switch (NEPS) system targeted at the retail market where the greatest exclusion occurs. With the NEPS project approved by the World Bank in 2022 and its implementation underway, the proposed project is critical to efforts to improve financial inclusion in Liberia, currently standing at 44.2% (Findex 2021), and reach to disenfranchised populations including youth, women, smallholder farmers, Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)  and other rural populations... Read more on Ecofin Agency

Source: Ecofin Agency