Abstract
Financial innovation is robustly revolutionising financial inclusion and financial development, especially in sub-Saharan African countries. Given the extensive informal economy in the region, an urgent desire to ease financial transactions has become even more paramount. This chapter describes the nature and extent of financial innovation in Ghana. It presents an overview of how Ghana is harnessing financial innovation to facilitate financial inclusion. The emerging facts suggest that mobile money technology has resulted in the most expansive outreach of financial services. Although the widespread success of mobile money services is significant for financial inclusion, this chapter also highlights the insidious threat posed by accompanying fraudulent activities. Consequently, the overall success of the financial innovation drive would require a robust and sustained welfare-enhancing mechanism to produce a more satisfied clientele which would lead to a meaningful and positive financial development.
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Notes
- 1.
Project Inthanon, Faster Payment System (FPS), Portugal Finlab, Project Jasper, among others.
- 2.
A secure storage protocol fostering exceptional levels of innovation.
- 3.
The word financial innovation is limited to new or altered financial instruments (i.e. deposit and cash management instruments) issued by banks and other deposit-taking institutions. The term also means the inclusion of new financial instruments in financial institutions and markets through new technologies.
- 4.
FinTech stands for ‘Financial Technologies’, and it encompasses all technologies used and applied in the financial services sector.
- 5.
JCB (formerly Japan Credit Bureau) is the only international payment brand based in Japan. It offers high quality payment solution and technologies that are trusted worldwide since1981. JCB cards are also accepted in Australia, New Zealand and Canada with the partnership with American Express, and in the U.S. through Discover Network. It has also partnered with UnionPay enabling cards from both brands to be used at selected merchants in Japan and China.
- 6.
NFC POS is the same technology used by Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android Pay and others. This enables a payment card or smartphone to ‘talk’ to a nearby in-store POS terminal as long as that terminal is also NFC-enabled.
- 7.
A typical example is Alipay. Alipay is a QR code-based mobile wallet; an electronic payment system and the leading third-party online payment platform with the biggest market share in China.
- 8.
The YouTube videos chosen for this study were based on their focus and relevance to financial innovation in Ghana. The videos were chosen from face-to-face interviews on the YouTube channels of Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC) Africa, the World Bank, and the International Center for Strategic Alliances (ICSA).
- 9.
GhIPSS 2021 Half Year Performance Report: https://ghipss.net/phocadownload/newsletter/External-Newsletter-Vol-8.pdf.
- 10.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) of the Ghana Police Service, Dr Gustav Herbert Yankson.
- 11.
The figure is reported to have declined in 2018.
- 12.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications.
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Sebu, J., Bondzie, E.A., Ewusie, EA., Tawiah-Mensah, J. (2023). Harnessing Financial Innovation for Financial Inclusion in Ghana. In: Peprah, J.A., Derera, E., Ngalawa, H., Arun, T. (eds) Financial Sector Development in Ghana. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Banking and Financial Institutions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09345-6_3
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