Ghana sees route to ‘cash-lite’ economy through mobile money

Ghana’s burgeoning mobile money sector is a route to a “cash-lite” economy, said the Bank of Ghana’s deputy governor.

In a speech last week, Maxwell Opoku-Afari stressed the large gains that Ghana has made in financial inclusion, mostly due to the growth of its mobile money sector. He said the number of mobile money accounts has grown from 3.8 million in 2012 to 32.6 million at the end of last year, which is greater than the population of Ghana (30.1 million).

The deputy governor said the growth of mobile money had created “a paradigm shift to a new kind of retail banking system where large segments of the unbanked populace are being absorbed into the financial services sector”.

In May, Ghana passed the Payment Systems and Services Act, which allowed direct licensing of fintech firms by the Bank of Ghana and encouraged at least 30% Ghanaian ownership in fintech firms.

Opoku-Afari pledged further reforms to the fintech sector, saying that lowering prices of digital financial services and strengthening transaction security were key goals of the central bank. He hoped these reforms would “promote the country’s cash-lite agenda” and deepen financial intermediation.

He said the Bank of Ghana was aiming to boost the fintech sector as a whole, hoping it would work to lower the speed and cost of transactions, as well as offering more innovative payment products that could reach remote areas of the country.

 “We will be coming out with the operational guidelines and licensing requirements for fintechs in the next couple of weeks,” added Opoku-Afari.