BoG Announces GH¢20 Million Minimum Capital For Mobile Money Companies

Governor of Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison

Accra, Ghana, September 12, 2019//-The Bank of Ghana (BoG) today announced a GH¢20 million minimum capital requirement for all mobile money companies operating in the country.

This follows the recently passed Payment Systems and Services Act, 2019 (Act 987) which provides a legal and regulatory framework for the orderly development of Ghana’s payment system.

A notice issued by the BoG and signed by its Secretary Mrs Frances Van-Hein Sackey classified the payment system providers (PSP) into five.

Electronic money issuer

For SPS companies in particular mobile money companies whose activities are- issuance of electronic money, recruitment and management of agents, creation and management of wallet are required to have a minimum capital of GH¢20 million.

Also, they can handle wallet based domestic money transfers including transfers to and from bank accounts, cash in and cash out transactions, investment, savings, credit products only in partnership with banks, insurance and pension products only with authorised insurance and pension companies, are within the electronic money issuer (EMI) category.

The notice was quick to add that GH¢25,000, GH¢100,000 and GH¢10,000 will be charged as processing fee for the EMI license, licence, and renewable fee respectively.

PSP Scheme

Companies operating in the payments ecosystem that require the PSP Scheme license before they can perform routing of payment transactions, authorization and settlement request from merchants, acquiring and issuing banks must have a minimum capital of GH¢8 million.

PSP Enhanced License

Furthermore, the PSP Enhanced License mandates companies to have GH¢2 million as minimum capital.

With this license, companies are permitted to embark upon aggregation of processing services, merchant services, provision of hardware and software, printing and personalisation of EMV Cards, inward international remittances services, merchant acquiring, POS deployment and payment aggregation.

PSP medium licence

Companies which are licenced under the PSP Medium Licence category are required to have GH¢0.8 million as their minimum capital.

Similarly, they are mandated to pay GH¢8,000; GH¢15,000; and GH¢5,000 as processing, licence, and renewal fees respectively.

These companies can deploy payment Gateway and Portals/Payment aggregation which is connected to Enhanced PSP.

They can also undertake training and support of merchants, printing of non-cash payment instrument, development of market platforms, payment application/ solution for Credit, and Savings and Investment products in partnership with banks.

PSP Standard Licence

Companies which operate in the PSP Standard Licence are not required to have a minimum capital by law. But they are required to leverage on Enhanced licence.

The companies mandated to pay GH¢0.5, 000 for processing; GH¢1,000; and GH¢0.2, 000 for licence and renewal fees.

Additionally, they are permitted to deploy payment application solution/development, merchant development platform, and a payment solution in the West African country.

African Eye Report

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