With the FICSOC now in place, the impact of cyber threats on the banking and financial sectors will be lessened while information security controls are strengthened.
Bank of Ghana’s officials stated that the 23 regulated banks were linked to the FICSOC. So, the apex bank could use the platform to send reports and alerts to the banks via threat intelligence to improve their incident response processes.
FICSOC is a platform for sharing threat intelligence to coordinate cyber security efforts within the banking and financial sector. Ghana's Vice President stated that the Bank of Ghana had made significant investments to ensure the security of the digital financial industry.
As of June 2022, The Bank of Ghana has granted Vodafone Cash and CalBank customers the opportunity to test its online version of its digital currency (CBDC), the eCedi.
BoG has created online and offline wallets for eCedi to ensure convenience and easy accessibility for users but has only deployed the pilot programme in the city’s capital, Accra, and one place in its Western Region.
The offline version of the eCedi is used by selected customers to pay for daily purchases, including foods, groceries, and drinks in selected locations from the Western North Region of the country.
The Central Bank’s governor claims the pilot programme received positive feedback, indicating that the country may be ready for a nationwide roll-out of the digital currency soon. According to the governor, the eCedi will deepen financial inclusion and trigger higher mobilisation of saving resources, which could eventually lead to economic growth.
In April 2022, Cellulant has acquired a PSP license in Ghana as it launched Tingg, a digital payments platform for businesses and consumers.
As of January 2021, 38.9% of the population aged 15 years and older had a mobile money account in Ghana. However, cash remains a dominant preference for payments. One of the contributing factors for preference of cash over digital payments is the high costs of digital payments that are often passed on to users, a lack of trust in, or familiarity with digital payments, according to the press release.
To curb these inefficiencies in digital payments, Cellulant has successfully rolled out Tingg, a digital payments platform enabling businesses and their consumers to accept and make payments seamlessly. This announcement comes after the Central Bank of Ghana issued Cellulant a Payment Services Provider (PSP) license.
The PSP license allows Cellulant to aggregate merchant services, process financial services, acquire merchants, deploy POS systems, and aggregate payments for banks, institutions, and the general public. The license is a requirement under the Payment Services Act 2019, which mandates that all financial technology or digital payments companies be licensed by the Bank of Ghana before they can operate in the country.
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