Ghana’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face an estimated US$4.8 billion annual financing gap despite the country’s rapid expansion in digital payments, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has revealed.
Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Matilda Asante-Asiedu, says the country’s sophisticated digital payment infrastructure has yet to translate into equally efficient credit systems capable of providing businesses with timely access to financing.
Speaking at the National ICT Week celebration at the University of Ghana, where she delivered the third Distinguished Digital Finance Lecture, Ms Asante-Asiedu said Ghana must move beyond facilitating fast payments to using the enormous volume of transaction data generated by businesses to unlock credit.
“We have built extraordinary payment rails, but we have not yet built equally extraordinary credit rails,” she said.
According to her, the US$4.8 billion SME financing gap is particularly troubling given the substantial pool of financial resources available within Ghana’s banking, pension and investment sectors.
She highlighted a major disconnect in the financial system, where an SME can receive payments for goods and services within seconds through digital platforms but may have to wait months to obtain working capital from a financial institution.
“The disconnect between transaction data and credit access, in my view, is the single largest unrealized opportunity in this room,” she said.
Transaction Data Could Unlock SME Credit
Ms Asante-Asiedu called for a fundamental shift in how financial institutions assess the creditworthiness of SMEs, arguing that businesses’ digital transaction histories should increasingly form part of lending decisions.
She explained that mobile money and other digital payment records can provide valuable insights into transaction volumes, frequency, merchant activity, income patterns and whether a business is expanding or declining.
“This is not just background information. It is a credit record. We have simply not built the habit of reading it as such,” she stated.
The Second Deputy Governor also questioned the financial sector’s heavy dependence on traditional collateral such as land and buildings, noting that modern businesses increasingly generate value through contracts, receivables, purchase orders and transaction histories.
She said confirmed purchase orders, export contracts and multi-year service agreements could provide lenders with verifiable evidence of future income and potentially support lending decisions when backed by appropriate legal and regulatory frameworks.
GH¢493bn Mobile Money Transactions
Ms Asante-Asiedu said Ghana already possesses a massive digital footprint that could provide the foundation for a more inclusive credit ecosystem.
According to her, mobile money platforms processed 954 million transactions valued at approximately GH¢493 billion in June 2026 alone.
The country also has about 84.6 million registered mobile money accounts, of which 26.4 million are active, supported by more than one million registered agents.
She said the next phase of Ghana’s digital finance transformation must therefore focus on converting this extensive payment activity into productive financing opportunities, particularly for SMEs.
BoG Pushes Open Banking
As part of efforts to bridge the financing gap, Ms Asante-Asiedu said the Bank of Ghana is advancing open banking and open finance frameworks that could allow financial institutions to make better use of customer data in credit decisions.
She stressed that the success of open banking should not merely be measured by the number of application programming interfaces (APIs) developed, but by the amount of affordable credit ultimately unlocked for businesses.
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“The measure of success…should be how much credit” reaches businesses through the use of transaction data, she said.
She also identified cybersecurity risks, data governance, regulatory fragmentation and inadequate digital infrastructure as challenges that must be addressed to allow digital financial innovation to expand safely.
Ms Asante-Asiedu said the Bank of Ghana would continue collaborating with other financial regulators to strengthen coordination and ensure the country’s digital financial ecosystem contributes more effectively to business growth and broader economic development.
