The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has identified an estimated US$4.8 billion annual financing gap facing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), warning that the country’s sophisticated digital payment infrastructure has not yet translated into equally accessible credit for businesses.

Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Matilda Asante-Asiedu, said Ghana has made significant progress in digital payments but must now focus on building stronger digital credit systems to ensure businesses can use their transaction histories to access financing.

She made the remarks at the National ICT Week celebration at the University of Ghana, where she delivered the third Distinguished Digital Finance Lecture.

“We have built extraordinary payment rails, but we have not yet built equally extraordinary credit rails,” she said.

According to her, the financing gap is particularly concerning because Ghana already has substantial financial resources within its banking, pension and investment sectors.

“We have built extraordinary payment rails, but we have not yet built equally extraordinary credit rails,” she stressed, pointing to the disconnect between the ability of businesses to receive digital payments and their difficulty in securing working capital.

She said an SME owner could receive payments for goods within seconds through instant payment systems but may still wait several months to secure working capital.

“The disconnect between transaction data and credit access, in my view, is the single largest unrealized opportunity in this room,” she said.

Turning transaction data into credit

Ms Asante-Asiedu argued that digital transaction records should play a greater role in lending decisions.

She explained that mobile money records can show how much money moves through an account, the regularity of transactions, merchant activity, income patterns and whether a business is growing 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 said.

She also challenged the heavy reliance on traditional collateral such as land and buildings, noting that much of the value created by modern businesses is held in contracts, receivables 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 support credit decisions if the appropriate legal and regulatory structures were established.

Ghana’s digital payments reach

The Second Deputy Governor pointed to the scale of Ghana’s digital payment ecosystem as evidence that the country already has the foundation needed to expand digital finance.

She said mobile money platforms processed 954 million transactions valued at approximately GH¢493 billion in June 2026 alone**.

Ghana also has about *84.6 million registered mobile money accounts*, although she clarified that 26.4 million were active, supported by more than one million registered agents.

She said the challenge now is to use this extensive digital footprint to improve access to productive credit, particularly for SMEs.

BoG backs open banking

Ms Asante-Asiedu said the Bank of Ghana is advancing open banking and open finance frameworks as part of efforts to unlock financing for SMEs.

She said the success of open banking should not be measured simply by the number of APIs developed, but by whether the system enables small businesses to secure more affordable and accessible credit.

“The measure of success…should be how much credit” reaches businesses through the use of transaction data, she said.

She further identified regulatory fragmentation, cybersecurity, data governance and inadequate digital infrastructure as other challenges that must be addressed to allow financial innovation to scale safely.

Ms Asante-Asiedu said the Bank of Ghana would continue working with other financial regulators to strengthen coordination and ensure that Ghana’s digital financial ecosystem supports broader economic growth.