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By Kofi OWUSU-NHYIRA

Volumes 1 and 2 explored the sixteen-year development of mobile money: the actual process of adoption (which did not unfold as policy had anticipated), and the points where assumptions differed from reality.

This is Part 3: the lessons gained, and the tasks that remain.

Tips for Ghana’s Upcoming Digital Finance Era

Ghana is currently at the beginning of a new digital financial era, marked by digital public infrastructure for identification, transactions, and data, real-time interoperable payment systems, API-driven connections among banks, telecommunications companies, and fintech firms, AI-powered risk models and credit evaluation, increasing threats from cybercrime and fraud, and cross-border payments and digital trade facilitated by the AfCFTA.

Over the past sixteen years, mobile money has provided three essential lessons for the upcoming phase.

Lesson 1: Design with behavior in mind, not just aspirations

Digital finance thrives when it aligns with real-world money management practices, rather than idealized concepts.

In African markets, studies conducted by GSMA, FSD Africa, and international organizations repeatedly indicate that users are more inclined to digitize movement than storage, with managing liquidity being more important than formalization.

In Ghana, USSD continues to be the primary method for mobile money transactions, with cash-in and cash-out activities being the most common types of transactions. Merchant adoption is still limited, and average wallet balances remain low. These patterns are structural rather than temporary. Consequently, policy should start by addressing the realities of an economy that is largely informal, characterized by limited liquidity, irregular income, reliance on personal trust, weak savings habits, and a high level of perceived risk.

Individuals choose what aligns with their lifestyles, rather than what conforms to policy designs.

Lesson 2: Enhance human resources

Ghana’s digital financial infrastructure relies on an outdated foundation: the agent network. Approximately 896,000 agents are registered, with about 411,000 currently active. The main reason for agent inactivity is a lack of available funds. These agents continue to manage most cash-in and cash-out transactions and carry out roles akin to small branches rather than just retail points.

Agents serve as the public face of digital finance. They act as the entry point, the trust mechanism, the conflict resolution system, and the liquidity provider. A digital ecosystem’s strength is limited by its weakest human element.

The following stage should therefore focus on enhancing working-capital and liquidity support for intermediaries, implementing more transparent and consistent settlement processes, establishing liquidity insurance or guarantee mechanisms at the system level, strengthening anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing, fraud detection, and know-your-customer capabilities at the intermediary level, as well as introducing tiered, risk-based compliance requirements that take into account the practical conditions of intermediaries.

No digital public system can thrive if the underlying human structure fails.

Lesson 3: Align technological advancement with economic conditions

Digital rails enable the rapid transfer of value, yet the economic structure defines what users are truly capable of doing with that value.

Mobile money effectively digitalized transactions, but Ghana has not yet fully achieved the second part of the fintech vision: financial inclusion.

Only payments are not sufficient to achieve lasting savings, large-scale credit, working capital for MSMEs, agricultural financing, insurance adoption, asset building, or long-term financial stability.

resilience.

These results demand more advanced support systems: data exchange that is interoperable and based on risk, enabling regulated entities to use transaction records safely and equitably, updated credit structures including flexible collateral registries and acknowledgment of movable assets, strong identity frameworks integrating Ghana Card and digital address information throughout onboarding and risk assessment, equitable standardized API access allowing banks, telecom companies, and fintechs to develop innovations without relying on individual agreements, focused incentives for digitizing merchants that tackle fee models and low profit margins, access to capital for agents and small businesses acknowledging working capital as a critical limitation, and real-time fraud detection systems with cooperation among different service providers.

Money is transferred through payments. Financial development retains funds within the system and directs them towards productive purposes.

What’s Next: From Access to Depth

The key policy takeaway for mobile money is its alignment with actual behavior, rather than technical complexity.

As Ghana develops AI-powered lending systems, digital-ID based registration processes, central bank digital currency trials, open-API structures, fintech recognition programs, and payment solutions aligned with AfCFTA, it encounters the same critical decision that companies faced in 2009: Build for the current market, or for the one we hope to see.

Mobile money has already provided the solution. It has also revealed the remaining tasks.

Ghana has accomplished something impressive: almost complete access to digital payments and one of the quickest adoption rates on the continent. However, the more profound changes are still not fully realized. The next phase requires us to address the structural challenges that were previously postponed due to their complexity, sluggishness, or lack of commercial appeal.

The work still ahead

1. Strengthening human infrastructure:Agent liquidity continues to be the primary operational challenge. Unless access to working capital, settlement periods, and agent financials are resolved, any new digital infrastructure will encounter the same limitation.
2. Creating substance, not merely entry:Wallet balances stay low. In the absence of mechanisms to maintain value, transaction data remains limited and families remain economically vulnerable. This necessitates compatible savings solutions, credit systems that acknowledge informal assets, and offerings tailored for unpredictable income flows.
3. Expanding interoperability beyond payments:Ghana achieved wallet-to-wallet compatibility in 2018. Important subsequent layers are still not fully developed: compatibility with merchants, API integration, cross-border connectivity, and data exchange based on risk across the system.
4. Synchronizing motivations for the digital transformation of merchants:Although there is growth in GhQR and POS, small merchants still favor cash because of their sensitivity to fees, the time it takes to settle payments, and how they manage their working capital. To promote digital transactions, these underlying issues need to be tackled, not just by adding more payment terminals.
5. Expanding regulatory certainty beyond financial transactions:Act 987 offers well-defined guidelines for financial transactions, yet digital credit services, fintech companies centered on savings, and asset management platforms continue to function in ambiguous zones. This ambiguity leads entrepreneurs to adopt transaction-based models with clearer regulations, thereby restricting the development of more in-depth innovations.

From Mobile Money to Digital Finance 2.0

Ghana’s significant trial in financial inclusion was mobile money. It succeeded by acknowledging human behavior instead of enforcing idealistic approaches.

The subsequent stage, Digital Finance 2.0, should be Ghana’s comprehensive initiative. It’s not merely about transferring funds, but about keeping them. It’s not only about transactions, but about financial stability. It’s not solely about inclusion, but about change.

This involves addressing the challenging issues we overlooked while focusing on access: agent economics, funds accumulation, credit structure, merchant motivations, data compatibility, and long-term investment.

These difficulties are not mainly technological. They are related to structure, behavior, and economics. Overcoming them will need the same kind of cooperative ecosystem that developed mobile money: operators gaining insights from users, regulators adapting to real-world situations, and entrepreneurs creating solutions for genuine needs instead of hypothetical markets.

Over the past sixteen years, we have learned how to connect with millions. The next sixteen years should focus on providing them with meaningful support.

Since access without substance does not equate to financial inclusion, it is digital infrastructure that affects lives without bringing about meaningful change.

And Ghana has the potential for greater achievements.

Kofi Owusu-Nhyira is a fintech entrepreneur and policy consultant residing in Ghana. He shares insights drawn from his hands-on experience in developing and maneuvering within Africa’s digital financial landscape.

www.owusunhyira.com

Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc.Syndigate.info).