MR. ARCHIE HESSE

Archie Hesse is the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) Limited – a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of Ghana, mandated to transform Ghana into an electronic payments society. He joined GhIPSS in 2007 as a General Manager in Charge of Projects and Business Development before his appointment as CEO in July, 2012.

Archie Hesse’s immense contribution to the improvement and development of Ghana’s Payment Systems Landscape has been recognized by some prestigious institutions:

2022 – Top 20 Tech Leaders Award at the 12th GITTA Awards
2020 – Payment Systems Personality of the Year at the 10th GITTA Awards
2019 – Payment Systems Personality of the Year at the 10th GITTA Awards
2018 – Man of the Year, Technology at the 2018 EMY Africa Awards & Payment Systems Personality of the Year at the 9th GITTA

Archie Hesse serves on the GhIPSS Board as Executive Director. He is also a member of Ghana’s Payment Systems Advisory Council. With 15 years in the Payment Systems industry, Archie has leveraged his knowledge and experience in Payment Systems to support a number of countries in Africa. He has helped shape policy and strategy in the deployment of national payments system infrastructure in these countries.

Under his leadership as CEO, Archie Hesse has led the GhIPSS team to develop several payment solutions for the Financial Services Sector. In June 2022, he led the launch of Africa’s first Universal Bank-led Mobile Wallet service for the financial services industry. He also led the development and implementation of Ghana’s Universal QR code solution, GhQR and the Proxy Pay service in 2020. In 2018, Ghana launched its Mobile Money Interoperability service, following the successful launch of Ghana’s Instant Pay platform in 2015. GhIPSS Instant Pay is Ghana’s instant interbank transfer service. In 2012, he led GhIPSS to commission gh-link™- an interbank switching and processing system that interconnects the systems of all universal banks in Ghana. On the back of the gh-link network, Ghana’s domestic card, the gh-link EMV card was also introduced.

In December 2007, as General Manager in charge of Projects and Business Development, he project managed the implementation of the ‘e-zwich’ Biometric Smart Card and was at the forefront of a nationwide campaign to educate the Ghanaian populace on the e-zwich system. He also led the digitization of Ghana’s Cheque clearing process in 2009 and successfully added on the implementation of the ACH Direct Credit and Debit systems in 2011.

Archie Hesse is an accomplished event and conference speaker and has spoken at many conferences such as: PowerCARD Users Meeting (A global meet of users of the PowerCARD switch by Hightech Payment Systems of Morocco), Annual ID4Africa Conference, Cartes Afrique, Ghana Economic Forum, Yamson and Associates Business Roundtable among others.

Prior to joining GhIPSS, he worked with the BMW Group in Munich, UK, South Africa and the US for over a decade on various IT transformation initiatives in the Logistics, Manufacturing, Sales and Marketing divisions. He supported the production of BMW and Rolls Royce automobiles, as well as the MINI.

Archie Hesse spent nine years as a professional educator in the UK before joining the BMW Group. He has a degree in Physics and Computing, a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Finance. He also holds a professional qualification in Project Management and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).