In a speech to the Ghana Association of Banks’ industry thought leadership event, Bank of Ghana Governor Johnson P. Asiama announced three initiatives aimed at accelerating digital finance and last-mile inclusion: a National Digital Finance Interoperability Forum to be launched by Q4 2025 as a quarterly dialogue with banks, fintechs, telcos and regulators, forthcoming guidelines requiring all financial service providers to adopt interoperable digital identity standards for KYC and fraud detection, and an AI and Risk Governance Working Group with the Ghana Fintech and Payments Association and key banks to develop policy recommendations on AI use in credit scoring, fraud detection and financial decision-making. The announcement was positioned against a market where mobile money processes over 97% of digital transaction volumes and 72% of value, while bank digital channels account for less than 1% of volume, alongside more than 4 million users of unsecured mobile loans. Asiama pointed to expected industry outcomes including a Technical Working Group on Open Banking Readiness to support API standardisation, data portability and consent-driven services, and referenced forthcoming regulatory reforms on data governance and consumer protection. Work is also underway with government and private-sector partners on biometric authentication and biometric financial authentication infrastructure, and the Bank of Ghana’s regulatory sandbox is expected to evolve into a more agile, digital-first testbed. On the macro backdrop, the Governor attributed recent cedi stability to a market-oriented approach including a more efficient foreign exchange auction framework, enhanced market surveillance and tighter alignment of FX demand with real-sector transactions, and reiterated that the Bank of Ghana is not pursuing a fixed exchange rate target or band under its flexible exchange rate regime. He also referenced an upcoming Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill and said the central bank is monitoring geopolitical tensions in the Middle East for potential spillovers to Ghana.

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