Ghana's fast-growing digital payments ecosystem is facing a serious test of public confidence as fraud, social engineering and weak coordination across platforms threaten the country's cash-lite agenda.

This was the central issue at the inaugural Digital Economy Forum, convened by JoyNews and the Multimedia Group in partnership with Hubtel under the theme "The Trust Crisis: Why Fraud is Holding Back Ghana’s Digital Economy".

The forum brought together regulators, banks, fintech operators, mobile money providers, cybersecurity experts, academia, agents, students and members of the public for a documentary-led national dialogue on fraud and digital trust.

Data presented at the forum showed that Ghana now has more than 80 million registered mobile money accounts, with over 26 million active accounts every 90 days. In 2025 alone, digital financial transactions reached nearly 10 billion in volume, valued at more than GH¢4.5 trillion.

But participants warned that the same growth has created new vulnerabilities, with fraudsters increasingly targeting consumers through impersonation, phishing, fake customer service numbers, clone websites and other manipulative schemes.

The forum recommended stronger industry-wide coordination, including the onboarding of fintechs and dedicated electronic money issuers onto the FinSec Security Operations Centre, the creation of a unified fintech and PSP association, stronger real-time fraud intelligence sharing, improved public education and better training for frontline police officers.

Participants agreed that Ghana’s digital economy can only grow sustainably if secure technology is matched by informed consumers, faster incident response and stronger accountability across the financial ecosystem.

Below is the full communiqué: