The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has said the e-cedi is still high on its agenda despite the current economic difficulties and engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In 2022, Ghana began piloting a retail central bank digital currency, both online and offline, in three locations; Accra, Tarkwa and Sefwi Asafo.
While the first two locations explored several use cases for online payments, Sefwi Asafo saw an offline experiment.
Explaining the importance of exploring an offline CBDC, at the Payments Canada Summit held in Toronto from 3-5 May 2023, Dr Maxwell Opoku-Afari, the First Deputy Speaker at the Bank of Ghana, said that any currency has to work for all Ghanaians, no matter where they are located. And, while Ghana has seen the percentage of people with formal bank accounts soar in the last decade, nearly a third of the population is still unbanked.
“The bank also opted for a token-based, rather than an account-based, system – minting the eCedi hand and then distributing it via commercial players – one mobile money provider, two banks, and two PSPs.”
“This approach, rather than the use of a central bank app, was chosen because the goal was to enable the ecosystem,” said Dr Opoku-Afari.
The online pilots saw participants use existing banking apps and involved P2P, wallet-to-bank, merchant, and bill payments.
In contrast, the offline experiment saw the e-cedi distributed via a smart card, concentrated on merchant payments, and run purely by the bank without commercial players.
Opoku-Afari said the reason for the focus on merchant payments is that, as of 2017, 99% of these transactions were still carried out in cash.
Dr Opoku-Afari said that the bank wanted to test three things: “Can the currency work for consecutive offline payments; will the target users be able to use it; and will they want to use it?”
He said the BoG recorded that a significant percentage of participants were positive about the system.
Reporting by Nana Oye Ankrah in Accra
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