Ghana must move beyond digital payments and leverage its financial technology infrastructure to deepen financial inclusion, expand access to credit and give consumers greater choice, Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Matilda Asante-Asiedu, has said.
She said the country had built a strong foundation for digital financial innovation but needed to focus on how that infrastructure could translate into broader economic opportunities for ordinary Ghanaians.
Speaking at the National ICT Week 2026 in Accra, Ms Asante-Asiedu said digital financial services should go beyond enabling instant transactions to helping individuals and businesses access credit and competitive financial products.
She cited the example of a market trader in Techiman who could already send money instantly through digital platforms, but argued that the next stage of innovation should enable the trader to use her established business activity and transaction history to access credit on competitive terms.
According to her, the ability to transact digitally was only the starting point for achieving meaningful financial inclusion.
She stressed the importance of system liquidity and effective dispute resolution mechanisms, particularly when digital transactions failed, warning that weaknesses in any part of the financial ecosystem could undermine efforts to scale digital services.
“Scale is only as strong as its weakest link,” she said, highlighting the need for reliable infrastructure and coordinated systems to support the expansion of digital financial services.
Ms Asante-Asiedu pointed to Kenya’s experience with M-Pesa as an example of how regulatory support could enable financial innovation.
She noted that in 2007, the Central Bank of Kenya allowed Safaricom to launch M-Pesa while working to develop an appropriate regulatory framework around the service.
The experience, she said, demonstrated the importance of regulators creating an environment that allowed innovation to develop while ensuring that the financial system remained safe and reliable.
She said Ghana had already established much of the infrastructure required to support further digital financial innovation and should now concentrate on extracting greater economic and social value from it.
This, she added, would require collaboration among regulators, industry players and the wider public to build a financial ecosystem that provides greater access, choice and opportunities.
The Second Deputy Governor said innovation at scale should therefore not be measured only by the number of people able to make digital payments, but also by the extent to which digital financial services improve access to finance and empower consumers to make informed financial choices.
She urged stakeholders to work together to strengthen the ecosystem and ensure that Ghana’s progress in digital finance translates into deeper and more meaningful financial inclusion.
