Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison has revealed Ghana currently has 19 million active mobile money accounts driving the country’s digital financial services sector.
The figure, according to the governor initially stood at 14 million prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in Ghana.
Speaking at the 2021 Ghana Economic Forum in Accra, Dr. Ernest Addison said, “It is clear that the pandemic resulted in bringing households and firms into the FINTECH space. Similarly, the Mobile money interoperability continued to show strong growth, recording 365 percent growth in volume and 651 percent in value between 2019 and 2020”
“As of September this year, interoperability transactions grew by 216 percent in volume and 350 percent in value compared to the same period last year. This further indicates the increasing consumer confidence and preference for digital payment options,” Dr Ernest Addison added.
He explained that rapid changes in payments technology has made the use of technology in financial services [to] become a necessity rather than a choice, driven by consumer demand for convenience, efficiency, and lower cost of transactions.
As a result of these, Dr Ernest Addison said digital payments have been on an uptrend with various Governments’ joining the digitisation process.
“Most central banks are at various exploratory stages of developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), with the recognition of money as an important public good and whose stability needs to be protected,” the governor said.
Dr. Ernest Addison said the Bank of Ghana has already entered the space keen on piloting the CBDC, with broad stakeholder consultations on the project.
“This will eventually lead to the issuance of a digital currency, the E-Cedi, a safe and stable means of payments and settlements which would further advance financial inclusiveness, promote efficiency in the payment systems, and foster competition in the financial sector,” he concluded.