The Ghana Card has positioned Ghana as a continental leader in secure digital identity due to Margins ID Group’s decade-long partnership with the National Identification Authority (NIA) in developing the card, the Chairman of the NIA Board, Mr Moses Afetsi Positive, has revealed.
He said the expertise and dedication of Margins ID, through its subsidiary Intelligent Card Production Systems (ICPS), had been central to building a robust national identification framework which had become a cornerstone of governance and economic transformation.
Mr Positive disclosed this when the NIA Board held its first official stakeholder engagement with Margins ID Group to review progress on the Ghana Card project and discuss strategies for sustaining the digital identity system in Accra on Friday.
He noted that the company’s attainment of multiple international certifications, including ISO and cybersecurity standards, demonstrated Ghana’s capacity to meet global benchmarks.
However, he cautioned that discipline and ethical conduct by staff were equally critical in maintaining the system’s integrity.
“ISO certifications tell you what to do, but the human factor is something you always have to work with. ISO will help and give you the structures, but people — I know — will always find a way out,” he said.
As part of the engagement, the NIA Board toured the Margins ID Group headquarters and the ICPS facility in Accra, the largest secure card production facility in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Board members were taken through the entire Ghana Card production process, from software development to card issuance, and briefed on the compliance protocols and cybersecurity safeguards in place.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of Margins ID Group, Mr Moses Baiden, explained that advanced safeguards had been embedded in the system, including self-auditing printers which make every card traceable from production to distribution.
This, he said, ensured accountability and significantly reduced the risk of fraud.
ICPS holds certifications such as ISO 9001:2015 for Quality Management, PCI CP (Payment Card Industry Card Production & Provisioning) and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for Information Security Management Systems.
Margins ID Group itself has also secured ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO 22301:2019, ISO 20000:2018, as well as Cybersecurity Service Provider accreditations.
For over a decade, the Group has partnered with the NIA to register Ghanaian citizens, diaspora Ghanaians, and foreign nationals resident in the country.
The Ghana Card has since become a mandatory requirement for banking, telecommunications, healthcare and access to government services, entrenching its place in the country’s digital economy.
The engagement underscored the NIA Board’s resolve to strengthen collaboration with its technical partners and enhance public confidence in the Ghana Card, while Margins ID Group reaffirmed its commitment to secure, scalable and globally certified identity solutions to support Ghana’s digital transformation.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
