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The government of Ghana has launched three new policy initiatives designed to deepen financial inclusion and accelerate digital payments in line with government's vision of building a payment system that accelerates economic development.

The Government of Ghana is seeking to harness the benefits of a shift from cash to digital payments by developing a national inclusive digital payments ecosystem where everyone can make - and receive - payments digitally. A Digital Payments Roadmap has been drawn up by the Ministry of Finance with support from the Better Than Cash Alliance.

The Bank of Ghana plans to test a general purpose central bank digital currency (CBDC) in partnership with German banknote printer Giesecke+Devrient (G+D). G+D is providing the technology and will adapt their Filia CBDC solution adapted to Ghana's requirements, which will be tested in a pilot with banks, payment service providers, merchants, consumers and other relevant stakeholders. Filia enables secure, consecutive offline payments in case no network connection is available.

"Institute of Ghana introduced a 1.5% tax ("E-levy") on mobile money transactions in May 2022, in a country where 40% of the population aged 15 and above use mobile money platforms. It has been justified as a way to reduce aid dependence, and to capture informal economy workers. An International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) paper finds that the overall effect of the E-levy is highly regressive with users in the bottom income quintile paying the largest share as a proportion of their income, especially home-based informal workers. However, a 100 cedi/day (equivalent to about $10/day) taxation threshold has provided some relief.

The Bank of Ghana has launched GhanaPay, a common mobile wallet open to banks, savings and loans companies and rural and community lenders, enabling the industry to pool resources and reduce the cost of developing and testing new technologies. With GhanaPay, merchants do not need to maintain banking relationships with several banks to receive bill payments from other bank customers. In addition, customers only need to maintain an account with a bank to make bill payments to the entire network of customers and merchants registered with GhanaPay.

In December 2023, EMTECH successfully delivered a CBDC Hackathon as a strategic pilot for the Bank of Ghana's e-Cedi project. After receiving 88 applications, the Bank of Ghana ultimately selected 10 participants who onboarded a dedicated hackathon platform, and received Institutional Wallets and 1,000 BYDC-eCedi tokens from the central bank to prototype various solutions. They were then granted access to pre-built BYDC-eCedi APIs which eased the technical integration, as well as standardized how and who can create wallets for end users or how to transact with the tokens. All transactions were performed using Hedera's token and public ledger services using an ERC-20 token standard. This delivered transparency in transactions, plus the benefit of protecting user information.

WeTrust is an Ethereum-based decentralized financial services platform. WeTrust's first product is a Trusted Lending Circle (TLC) platform. A TLC a group of individuals who agree to meet for a defined period in order to save and borrow together. TLCs are commonly built along clan, geographical, social, or professional networks. These organizations have a variety of different names such as: tontine (Cambodia), susus (Ghana/ Caribbean Islands), tandas (Latin America), hui (China), chit funds (India), cundinas (Mexico), etc... https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/community-development/publications/discussion-papers/discussionpaper-ROSCAs.pdf

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published a report on the foundational digital infrastructure necessary for an inclusive digital economy and seamless cross-border transactions around the world, in collaboration with Mastercard and the central banks of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Ghana, and Kenya. The report highlighted four key pillars; digital identity, authorisation and consent, payments interoperability and data exchange standards.

In 2016, Ghana's AgroCenta launched AgroTrade, an online platform that connects smallholder farmers in the staple food value chain to a wider online market. The start-up provides access to truck delivery services and real-time market information via SMS and IVR. Building on this platform, AgroCenta now enables farmers to receive mobile money, build their credit score and access financial services (like crop insurance) through its latest mobile product, AgroPay. AgroCenta has also set up a mobile money API integration partnership with MTN and Vodafone to pay smallholder farmers directly and seamlessly via mobile money through its AgroPay platform.

A new African payment system, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), recently went live in Ghana, setting the stage for its rollout across the continent. The payment system seeks to strengthen African fiat currencies as well as to boost intra-Africa trade. It is an attempt to reduce African countries' dependence on the U.S. dollar. However, only seven countries - all members of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) - were part of the pilot phase.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Deputy Governor Innocent Matshe reportedly said the RBZ will proceed with plans to a central bank digital currency (CBDC), undeterred By the slow adoption of Nigeria's eNaira. In addition to sending a team to learn from the Central Bank of Nigeria's experiences, the RBZ has also reportedly sent teams with a similar mission to countries like China and Ghana.

Speaking at the Digital Banking Summit Innovation and Excellence Awards 2019 in Accra yesterday, Dr Opoku-Afari said adopting digital technology by players in the banking and financial space could help promote transactional efficiency in the delivery of financial services as well as scale up and broaden financial access to all segments of the society.

"The past year has been a year of exciting initiatives for Ghana's digital infrastructure. The Government has adopted digitization as a key policy objective and has recently introduced a number of programs designed to develop a more digitally accessible public sector and encourage transparency and efficiency, in order to drive growth in all aspects of the country's economy."