There has been a transition that has occurred throughout the entire country.

A major change has been going on in Ghana, where all banks will soon be able to bring in mobile payments as an offering for their customers, following enhancements that have been made to the interbank switching and processing system in the country.

This was done by Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), a Bank of Ghana subsidiary.

The enhancements that were made to the national switch were to the gh-link platforms. That is the interbank switching and processing system from GhIPSS which interconnects switches that are run by the country’s various financial institutions and third party institution owned systems. GhIPSS came up with a gh-link mobile payments system in partnership with eTranzact, a Nigerian transaction company. The introduction of gh-link mobile is an element of the mandate from the GhIPSS to turn Ghana into a society that functions with digital transactions. This, according to the chief executive of GhIPSS, Archie Hesse.

Hesse explained that the mobile payments system has been developed and will soon be tested.

The mobile payments system has already been created. Its testing will begin near the start of 2014 before it will officially be rolled out. All of the country’s banks will then be able to add smartphone based transactions to their offerings.

In 2012, gh-link ATM was introduced by GhIPSS, which gives the debit cards in the country the ability to be use in nearly all of the ATMs throughout the entire country. The Ghana News Agency reported that officials from GhIPSS official have been meeting with other transaction companies. For instance, meetings with MasterCard have brought about integration with cards that are branded by that credit card company into the gh-link platform of ATMs.

Furthermore, beyond mobile payments, GhIPSS has also started a pilot project that uses gh-link hybrid PoS (point of sale) terminals that allow customers of the banks in the country to be able to shop using their local ATM cards. The smartphone based transactions will be added on top of that gh-link platform in order to provide consumers with an added level of flexibility.

Retailers are giving one final post-Christmas sales push to get the most out of the shopping season.

Each of the five highest ranked retailers in the Keynote Mobile Commerce Index have implemented strategies that have been designed to be able to reduce the length of time that it takes their m-sites to load.

Keynote says that these stores are working to make sure their sites load faster and more accurately.

This was the same number of retailers that were using their standard web shopping sites for this post Christmas holiday shopping season and that were working to make sure that their sites loaded well. Out of the five top mobile commerce retailers as ranked by Keynote Systems, four experienced only a small variation in the speed and size of their pages last week when compared to the week before. This, according to a mobile performance evangelist from Keynote, Abelardo Gonzalez. Moreover, the leading five retailers in last week’s index were all the top five in the week before, as well.

The retailers used proper mobile commerce page design practices to improve the experience.

Gonzalez explained that “The retailers took advantage of mobile page design web practices—such as minimizing the number of objects and page size—to deliver a consistent and reliable experience.” The only exception that he identified was in JCP.com, from J.C. Penney Co. Inc., which saw a slower load time and a larger page size and object count than it had the week before. Despite the fact that it had a slower load time, however, Keynote did point out that the site was able to load 100 percent of the time.

J.C. Penney accomplished this goal through the use of a content delivery network. This firm, Akamai, was used to make certain that each of the elements of the page would render properly throughout the site. The reliability rating that this achieved for the site helped the company to keep its position among the top five retailers on the mobile commerce index. J.C. Penney’s position was second on the list, with a 100 percent success rate and a load time of 5.42 seconds, for a score of 935.