As part of efforts to ensure integration and interoperability in financial transactions among African countries, Ghana is working with Rwanda, Zambia, and other partners to pilot a continental digital trade corridor.
“This pilot, which will be implemented, tested, and measured, will focus on mobile money interoperability, mutual recognition of digital identity for cross-border KYC [know your customer] and harmonise electronic invoicing,” Vice President Professor Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang has said.
She said this while speaking at the 3i Africa Summit in Accra on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.
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“The objective is for a Ghanaian enterprise to be able to invoice clients and receive payments in cedis directly, efficiently, and at a reasonable cost,” she said.
The move follows the upgrading of Ghana’s payment infrastructure to support cross-border transactions.
The Vice President said that when this is fully implemented, it will enable businesses in Ghana, for example, to send invoices to counterparts in other African countries and receive payments in cedis without routing transactions through foreign third-party financial systems.
Professor Opoku-Agyemang said many intra-African transactions were routed through financial systems outside the continent.
“This adds costs and delays and undermines the very idea of a single African market,” she said.
She said some progress had been made through the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, adding that the African Continental Free Trade Area Digital Trade Protocol, adopted by the African Union Assembly in 2024, provides a basis to reduce payment delays through mobile money interoperability and cross-border electronic processes.
She did not announce a timeline for the implementation of the proposed corridor.
The Chief Executive of the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems Limited (GhIPSS), Clara B. Arthur, also speaking at the event, said Ghana’s payment systems were being migrated to the ISO 20022 global messaging standard.
She said the move would allow Ghana’s financial systems to operate on the same technical base as leading global financial markets, enabling richer transaction data and faster settlement.
“By adopting the standard, Ghana’s payment systems will speak the same language as the world’s leading financial infrastructure and markets, enabling richer transaction data and faster settlement,” she said.
She said GhIPSS was ready to connect with other instant payment systems across the continent.
“The future of digital finance lies in cross-border interoperability,” she said.
She explained that the GhIPSS sees its role as providing the systems on which partners can build solutions to expand access, increase usage and deepen financial inclusion.
She added that with the passage of the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, GhIPSS was engaging virtual asset providers to support shared infrastructure that allows for innovation, growth and regulation.
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