The Central Bank of Libya (CBL) discussed increasing e-payments with Libya’s Telecoms Holding Company LPTIC.
The discussions came during a meeting hosted today by Naji Issa, Governor of the CBL, with Ali Khamis Al-Farjani, Chairman of LPTC, in the presence of the directors of the telecommunications companies (Libyana, Al-Madar, and Libya Telecom & Technology), as well as the directors of electronic payment companies, and with the participation of the relevant departments of the CBL.
The meeting discussed ways to enhance cooperation between the banking and telecommunications sectors with the aim of developing the infrastructure for digital transformation and overcoming the difficulties facing the spread of electronic payment services in Libya.
Raising the transaction limits for electronic wallets
The attendees agreed to raise the transaction limits for electronic wallets. They also agreed to form a joint working group to follow up on the necessary technical and technological solutions to ensure the continuity and continuous and effective development of services.
Integrating migrant workers into formal economy through e-payment system
The meeting also devoted significant time to discussing mechanisms for integrating migrant workers into the formal economy through the electronic payment system, in a step aimed at promoting financial inclusion, eliminating the informal economy, and regulating the labour market in a way that achieves economic stability for the country.
Comment: Existing bureaucracy needs to be relaxed for migrants to be financially integrated
No more details were provided the CBL on how they envisioned to roll this policy forward, but huge stumbling blocks will need to be removed to enable the millions of migrant workers – overwhelmingly illegal Sub-Saharan Africans – to be integrated into the current financial system.
Libya’s overwhelming bureaucracy
It is bureaucratic enough for Libyan citizens to open a bank account to obtain a debit card, banking App or wallet, yet alone for an illegal alien. There would have to be a complete change of culture of the Libyan bureaucracy.
The need for ID
For example, a Libyan citizen needs to provide a National ID Number to open a personal bank account and have good contacts within a bank to be able to open a new bank account. Many banks are not interested in opening new personal bank accounts, preferring commercial accounts.
The need for a legal SIM card
Equally, illegal migrants will need a legal sim card to have a mobile phone to operate mobile e-banking and e-payments. Obtaining a sim card legally needs the provision of a passport as ID. Illegal migrants do not have any ID documents. The majority have crossed the Libyan borders across the desert avoiding capture by Border Guards.
Illegal migrants transfer most of their cash earnings through unofficial channels
It must be recalled that most illegal migrants transfer their current cash earnings back home through unofficial channels. This often means exchanging their dinar earnings into dollars on the black-market and handing over this cash to a countryman or woman returning to their homeland.
Equally, most of the families of these illegal migrants do not have bank accounts or live in big cities where there are banks. They come from a specific poor socio-economic stratum looking for very low paid manual work.
There needs to be a major cultural shift in policy formulation by the Libyan state
Therefore, we await the details of this new illegal migrant’s integration policy, but unless the government has decided to seriously think and come up with innovative policy that is outside its usual box and overlook the usual bureaucratic regulations or make special dispensations for illegal migrants, it is difficult to see how this will work.
