- BoG, AfCFTA Explore Stablecoins to Cut Africa’s Cross-Border Payment Costs
The Bank of Ghana is working with the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat to explore the use of stablecoins and other digital payment technologies as part of efforts to reduce the high cost and inefficiency of cross-border transactions across Africa.
Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama, said the continent had made progress in financial-sector integration, but payment and settlement systems remained a major bottleneck to intra-African trade.
Speaking at the 2026 ACI World Congress on the theme “Elevating Markets, Empowering People,” Dr Asiama said it was unacceptable that sending money within Africa could still be more expensive and slower than transferring funds to destinations outside the continent.
“What is lagging behind is the payments and settlements aspect. Someone says it is cheaper, for example, to send money across the oceans than it is to send money to another country within the sub-region,” he said.
The remarks underscore one of the biggest structural constraints facing the AfCFTA project. While tariffs, market access and trade protocols remain central to the continent’s integration agenda, businesses still face high transaction costs, currency-conversion challenges and settlement delays when trading across African borders.
Dr Asiama said the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System is already playing an important role in improving interoperability across jurisdictions, but added that more innovation would be required to build a seamless continental payment architecture.
He disclosed that the Bank of Ghana is working closely with the AfCFTA Secretariat to assess how stablecoins and other emerging digital financial technologies could support faster, cheaper and more efficient cross-border trade settlements.
According to him, the central bank has already initiated sandbox testing frameworks to assess new payment platforms and digital settlement models before they are allowed into wider market use.
The development points to a more active regulatory posture by the Bank of Ghana as it seeks to balance innovation with financial stability, consumer protection and anti-money laundering safeguards.
Stablecoins, which are digital tokens typically designed to maintain a fixed value against fiat currencies or other assets, have attracted growing interest globally as a possible tool for faster settlement and cheaper cross-border payments. But they also raise regulatory concerns around reserve backing, transparency, financial integrity, cybersecurity and systemic risk.
With African economies, the appeal is clear. Cross-border payments remain costly and fragmented, often routed through offshore correspondent banking systems that add delays, foreign exchange costs and compliance layers. This weakens the competitiveness of African businesses and limits the practical benefits of regional trade integration.
A trusted digital settlement framework could help importers, exporters, small businesses and fintech platforms trade more easily across borders, especially if aligned with AfCFTA’s broader goal of creating a single African market.
The discussions reinforce the Bank of Ghana’s ambition to position the country as a regional financial and fintech hub. The central bank has already been working on virtual asset regulation, fintech sandbox programmes, digital payment interoperability and the eCedi central bank digital currency project.
Dr Asiama’s comments also fit into a broader policy argument he has made in recent weeks: that emerging economies should not merely adopt financial systems designed elsewhere, but help shape the next generation of global financial infrastructure.
The Bank of Ghana’s engagement with the AfCFTA Secretariat therefore signals a potentially important shift: Africa’s trade integration agenda is increasingly becoming a payments and financial technology agenda.
