Mobile Money accounts have increased to 44million as of June 2021 — BoG

The Bank of Ghana has announced that mobile money accounts have increased thirty-fold to 44 million as of June 2021.

The volume of mobile money interoperability transactions he added has also increased twenty-four fold since its launch in 2018 to 10.3 million as of June 2021.

In addition, GHIPSS Instant Pay volume of transactions has also increased significantly since 2016.

The BOG Governor made these remarks in a keynote address presented on his behalf by Kwame Oppong, Head of Fintechs and Innovation at the MTN MoMo Stakeholder Payment Forum in Accra.

The forum which was under the theme: “Digitizing Payments in Ghana: A Collaborative Effort for Success”, brought together various stakeholders in the financial sector including the Bank of Ghana, Fintechs and some merchants.

Kwame Oppong however noted that inspite of these advancements, cash usage in the country is still high, despite its attendant risks.

“This clearly shows that the adoption of digital payments still remains uneven and there is room for improvement to move the frontier towards financial inclusiveness through broad-based digital payments”, he noted.

In order to leverage on the existing opportunities, the Bank’s long-term strategy for the payment systems he said, is to push for more collaboration among providers of financial digital products and electronic financial services.

“These collaborative initiatives have provided open and fair access to a shared payment infrastructure for banks and non-banks. It also serves as a good example of a strategy of collaborative competition which has been shown to increase scale and widen the scope of mobile money operations”, he added

Kwame Oppong stressed that the strong partnership that exists between banks and non-bank financial institutions for the provision of digital payments is expected to strengthen further, with the delivery of innovative value-added products and services to enhance financial digitization.

He however urged market players to continue to harness customer data to develop targeted value-added products by the confines of the data protection act and regulations in order to sustain the process.

Kwame Oppong also seized the opportunity to commend MTN for the initiative and commend the company’s Management for demonstrating strong commitment towards the country’s financial inclusion agenda and playing a critical role in Ghana’s mobile money space.