Ghana has positioned itself at the forefront of Africa’s digital finance integration agenda, with the Bank of Ghana issuing a forceful call at the 2026 3i Africa Summit in Accra for the accelerated deployment of interoperable instant payment systems across the continent. First Deputy Governor Dr Zakari Mumuni declared that inclusive instant payments are “essential infrastructure” and warned that fragmented systems, high transaction costs, and siloed platforms continue to undermine Africa’s digital economic ambitions. The summit, co-hosted by the Bank of Ghana and Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), also saw Ghana’s Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang announce plans to pilot a continental digital trade corridor with Rwanda and Zambia, while GhIPSS Chief Executive Clara Arthur revealed that Ghana is migrating its national payment systems to the ISO 20022 global messaging standard. The push comes as cross-border payments in Africa remain expensive — averaging 7 to 8 per cent of the total value sent — and as continental initiatives such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) gain momentum with more than 160 commercial banks now connected.
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Key Overview
- Event: 3i Africa Summit 2026, held at Destiny Arena, Accra, Ghana
- Host: Bank of Ghana in collaboration with Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS)
- Keynote speaker: Dr Zakari Mumuni, First Deputy Governor, Bank of Ghana
- Core message: Inclusive instant payments must be treated as critical economic infrastructure, not optional technology
- Key challenge: Fragmented payment systems, high transaction costs, weak interoperability across African borders
- Cost of cross-border payments: 7–8% of value sent across African borders (World Bank data)
- PAPSS network: More than 160 commercial banks across 12+ African countries now connected
- Ghana pilot: Digital trade corridor being tested with Rwanda and Zambia
- Infrastructure upgrade: GhIPSS migrating to ISO 20022 global messaging standard
- Ghana’s MMI platforms: Processed GH₵1.2 trillion (~$94 billion) annually by 2024
- Broader vision: Supporting intra-African trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)
Payments as Economic Infrastructure
At the heart of Dr Zakari Mumuni’s keynote address at the 3i Africa Summit 2026 in Accra was a simple but consequential argument: instant payment systems are no longer a financial technology convenience but a foundational layer of economic infrastructure, as vital to Africa’s development as roads, ports, and electricity grids. Without them, he warned, the continent’s ambition of a fully integrated digital economy will remain unrealised.
“Inclusive instant payments are therefore not optional — they are essential infrastructure,” Dr Mumuni said, delivering his address at Destiny Arena to an audience of policymakers, central bankers, fintech founders, and institutional investors from across the continent. The summit, co-hosted by the Bank of Ghana and GhIPSS, is recognised as one of Africa’s leading digital finance gatherings and comes at a pivotal moment in the continent’s financial evolution.
Dr Mumuni acknowledged that Africa has made significant strides over the past two decades. Mobile money, agency banking, fintech innovation, and digital wallets have collectively expanded access to financial services for hundreds of millions of people who were previously excluded from the formal banking system. Yet he argued that this progress, while impressive, remains fundamentally incomplete. “Africa has made progress in access, but without integration, that progress cannot translate into full economic participation,” he said, according to TechFocus24’s reporting from the summit.
The critical gap, according to the First Deputy Governor, lies in interoperability — the ability of different payment systems, platforms, and providers to communicate with each other seamlessly across institutions and national borders. Without it, digital payments remain trapped within individual ecosystems, limiting their utility for trade, business operations, and household financial management.
The Fragmentation Problem
The scale of fragmentation across Africa’s payment landscape is considerable. The continent has approximately 42 individual currencies and dozens of domestic payment schemes that operate largely in isolation from one another. Cross-border transactions frequently require routing through correspondent banks located outside Africa, often denominated in third-party currencies such as the US dollar or euro — a process that adds cost, complexity, and days of settlement time to what should be a straightforward transfer.
According to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices report, sending money across African borders incurs an average cost of 7 to 8 per cent of the total value sent, well above the global average of 6 to 7 per cent. Settlement can take three to seven business days. These inefficiencies impose a tangible tax on intra-African commerce and disproportionately affect small and medium-sized enterprises and individuals who lack the scale to absorb such costs.
Dr Mumuni was blunt about the consequences. “No instant payment system has fully achieved inclusivity at scale,” he told the summit, warning that the continent risked losing the gains of its digital finance revolution if systems were not urgently connected. He called for coordinated execution among regulators, payment system operators, financial institutions, and fintech companies to reduce friction and expand access, emphasising that infrastructure deployment alone would not guarantee inclusion.
Ghana’s Domestic Progress
Ghana’s own journey offers both a model and a cautionary tale. The country has been one of Africa’s most proactive in building digital payment infrastructure since GhIPSS was established in 2007 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of Ghana with the mandate to migrate the country toward an electronic payment society.
Since then, GhIPSS has built and operated a suite of interconnected platforms — including GhIPSS Instant Pay (GIP) for real-time interbank transfers, Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) for cross-network wallet transfers, the Ghana Automated Clearing House for bulk transactions, and GhQR for merchant payments. Ghana’s mobile money interoperability system, launched in 2018, was a continental first in its comprehensive integration of mobile money wallets with traditional bank accounts.
The results have been striking. By 2024, Ghana’s MMI platforms were processing GH₵1.2 trillion (approximately $94 billion) annually, while internet banking transactions tripled in value during the same year. GhIPSS Instant Pay has emerged as the preferred solution for payroll disbursements, bulk corporate payments, and peer-to-peer transfers.
Yet GhIPSS Chief Executive Clara Arthur acknowledged at the summit that sustaining this progress would require going further. She announced that GhIPSS is migrating Ghana’s national payment systems to the ISO 20022 global messaging standard — the same standard used by major global financial systems — to enhance transaction data, improve processing speeds, and align Ghana with international payment infrastructure. The migration is being described as a “strategic repositioning” that will make Ghana’s ecosystem more competitive and globally connected.
Arthur also revealed that GhIPSS is exploring collaborations with virtual asset service providers following the passage of Ghana’s Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, signalling a cautious but forward-looking approach to digital assets within a regulated framework.
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The Continental Push: PAPSS and Beyond
Ghana’s domestic reforms are taking shape against the backdrop of a broader continental effort to connect Africa’s fragmented payment systems. The most significant initiative is the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), developed by the African Export-Import Bank in collaboration with the African Union and the AfCFTA Secretariat.
Launched in January 2022, PAPSS is designed to enable instant or near-instant cross-border payments between African countries, settled in local currencies rather than requiring conversion through foreign intermediaries. The system uses a multilateral net settlement framework — consolidating all daily transactions between participating currencies and settling only the net balance — which reduces the volume of funds crossing borders and optimises liquidity for central banks. PAPSS aspires to save African businesses an estimated US$5 billion per year in transaction costs, according to the US International Trade Administration.
The system has grown steadily since launch. As of early 2026, more than 160 commercial banks and fintechs are connected to the PAPSS platform, with 15 central banks signed on. In February 2026, Kenya’s Pesalink network — connecting more than 80 banks, fintechs, SACCOs, and telcos — partnered with PAPSS to enable instant 24/7 cross-border payments from PAPSS participants into Kenyan banks and mobile money operators, all settled in local currencies. PAPSS CEO Mike Ogbalu III described the partnership as essential for delivering “true impact” through collaboration with national switches.
In Ghana, banks and non-bank financial institutions — including savings and loans companies, fintechs, and mobile money platforms — are expected to access PAPSS through the GhIPSS platform, further embedding the country’s domestic infrastructure within the continental system.
A Digital Trade Corridor Takes Shape
Perhaps the most ambitious announcement to emerge from the 3i Africa Summit came from Ghana’s Vice President, Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, who revealed that Ghana will collaborate with Rwanda and Zambia to pilot a continental digital trade corridor. The initiative will focus on four key areas: mobile money interoperability, digital identity for cross-border KYC verification, harmonised electronic invoicing, and mutual recognition systems aimed at reducing friction in intra-African transactions.
The Vice President pointed to a structural problem that continues to undermine the African Continental Free Trade Area’s potential: “In many cases, intra-African transactions are still routed through financial systems outside the continent and denominated in third currencies.” This architecture, she argued, increases costs, introduces delays, and weakens the effectiveness of the AfCFTA — the world’s largest free trade area by number of participating countries.
The pilot represents a practical test of whether digital infrastructure can be harmonised across sovereign jurisdictions with different regulatory frameworks, currencies, and levels of technological development. If successful, the model could serve as a blueprint for wider continental adoption.
Beyond Payments: The Next Layer
Bank of Ghana Governor Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama used the summit to signal that Accra’s ambitions extend well beyond payments. He told delegates that the next phase of digital finance in Africa will be defined not by access alone — which has improved dramatically — but by the depth and sophistication of financial services built on top of payment infrastructure.
“The next phase of digital finance will not be defined by payments alone,” Governor Asiama said. “Across our markets, the basic payment infrastructure is increasingly in place. The opportunity now lies in building the next layer of value.” That next layer, he explained, encompasses digital credit, merchant payments, embedded finance, supply-chain finance, and cross-border financial products targeted at small businesses, women, young people, and the informal sector — segments that remain significantly underserved despite the expansion of mobile money.
Asiama also stressed the urgency of strengthening digital identity and KYC systems across the continent, warning that weak authentication frameworks increase fraud risks and undermine trust in digital finance. He described the challenge in direct terms: “The issue is no longer access alone. It is fragmentation. It is cost. It is uneven regulatory alignment. The challenge is no longer building systems. It is connecting them.”
Obstacles to Integration
Despite the momentum, significant barriers remain. Internet access across Africa is uneven, with rural and peri-urban areas in many countries still lacking the connectivity required for reliable digital transactions. Regulatory frameworks differ substantially from country to country, creating compliance complexity for platforms attempting to operate cross-border. Digital identity coverage remains patchy, making KYC verification — a prerequisite for financial inclusion — difficult to implement at scale.
Dr Mumuni cited electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) frameworks, reduced onboarding barriers, and harmonised licensing regimes as key reforms being implemented in Ghana to address these challenges. But he was candid that similar reforms would need to be adopted continent-wide for true interoperability to function.
Cybersecurity and digital fraud also loom large. As payment systems become more interconnected, they also become more attractive targets for criminal actors. Governor Asiama warned that without robust security frameworks, the trust that underpins the entire digital finance ecosystem could be eroded.
Urgency and Execution
The consistent message from Ghanaian officials at the summit was one of urgency. The technological foundations for continental payment integration already exist, and the potential economic gains are substantial. What is lacking, according to Dr Mumuni, is not capacity but commitment.
“Let us move beyond fragmentation to full interoperability. Let us create systems that are inclusive by design and efficient by default. And let us work together — across institutions and across borders — to deliver the integrated payment infrastructure that our economies require,” he said, in what amounted to a call to action for Africa’s financial regulators, banks, fintechs, and policymakers.
Arthur of GhIPSS put the vision in practical terms, using the example of a market trader in Accra’s Makola market who simply expects to receive mobile money regardless of the sender’s platform. “That expectation reflects a system built on trust and efficiency,” she said. The challenge is to replicate that experience not just across platforms within Ghana, but across every border on the continent.
Industry stakeholders and development partners at the summit welcomed the call for continent-wide interoperability and expressed support for closer collaboration with regulators. The measure of success, as Dr Mumuni reminded delegates, will not be the quality of summit discussions but the actions that follow.
Sources: Ghanaian Chronicle, Business & Financial Times Ghana, NewsGhana, TechFocus24, MyJoyOnline, GhanaWeb, Ghana News Agency, GNBCC, GhIPSS, Afreximbank, Intelligent CIO Africa, US International Trade Administration, FXC Intelligence, MEF, Lightspark.
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