Between 2022 and 2025, fraud cases among Ghana’s payment service providers nearly doubled, according to data presented by Matilda Asante Asiedu, the Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, at a recent COCLAB workshop. She argued that the current regulatory framework, which places the burden of loss on consumers, has driven fraud to weaker institutions.
In contrast, the banking sector saw a 34% drop in fraud cases, falling from 716 in 2024 to 472 in 2025, while specialised deposit‑taking institutions halved from 344 to 182. The shift in fraud concentration, Asante Asiedu noted, reflects a move away from well‑defended banks toward less secure payment providers.
The Bank of Ghana linked this trend to lower digital literacy among users, yet the same customers are exposed to identical scam channels across all institutions. As a result, fraud has become a design problem: providers handle complaints but consumers absorb losses under current rules.
As a solution, Asante Asiedu proposed re‑allocating loss responsibility to providers, mirroring Britain’s approach where firms must reimburse victims of authorised push‑payment fraud up to £85,000 within five working days. In Ghana, a cap of GH¢20,000 could cover most cases, with the average loss per incident around GH¢4,000.
Additional measures include pre‑payment identity verification, a 90‑second emergency wallet block, and a shared mule‑account registry visible to all providers within an hour. These tools, already used by Ghanaian banks, would make fraud costly for providers and incentivise stronger safeguards.
As the country faces the risk of re‑entry onto the FATF grey list, the Bank of Ghana’s proposal seeks to align provider liability with the principle that the institution holding funds should bear loss responsibility. The regulator plans to phase in the new rules over eighteen months, giving fintechs time to adapt.
