- Fewer Transactions, More Money: Interbank Payment Value Jumps To GH¢9.45tn
Ghana’s interbank payment system processed GH¢9.45 trillion in transactions in 2025, up from GH¢6.13 trillion a year earlier, even as the number of transactions moving through the infrastructure declined, underscoring a rapid shift towards larger-value electronic payments.
Data from the Bank of Ghana’s 2025 Payment Systems Oversight Annual Report show that the value of transactions processed through the Ghana Interbank System increased by about 54.16% during the year. Transaction volumes, however, fell from 1,334,492 in 2024 to 1,247,975 in 2025, a decline of approximately 6.48%.
The divergence is significant because Ghana processed fewer interbank transactions while moving substantially more money through the financial system. The average value of each GIS transaction rose sharply to GH¢7.57 million, with the Bank of Ghana attributing the stronger performance to “heightened economic activity and greater participation by financial institutions on the platform.”
The numbers offer a clearer picture of how Ghana’s payments economy is changing. Rather than an increase driven simply by a larger number of payments, the growth in GIS value suggests that banks and other financial institutions are increasingly using electronic infrastructure to settle larger transactions.
That distinction is important when interpreting the GH¢9.45 trillion headline. The figure should not be read as equivalent to household consumption or a similar increase in underlying economic output, because interbank payment systems capture large institutional, corporate and financial-market settlements that can significantly inflate aggregate transaction values.
It nevertheless points to the growing importance of electronic payment infrastructure in the movement of capital across Ghana’s financial system. As more high-value transactions migrate onto digital platforms, the reliability and efficiency of those systems become increasingly important to the wider economy.
The transformation is particularly visible in the gradual retreat of the cheque. Interbank cheque-clearing volumes declined by 265,641 transactions in 2025, equivalent to a 4.80% fall, compared with a marginal 0.20% contraction recorded the previous year.
The Bank of Ghana attributed the decline to the “increased adoption of digital payment methods”, suggesting that electronic alternatives are no longer merely supplementing cheque payments but increasingly replacing them for many transactions.
Yet cheques are not disappearing entirely. Their total value increased from GH¢385.00 billion in 2024 to GH¢415.20 billion in 2025, an increase of approximately 7.84%, although that was considerably slower than the 31.00% growth recorded in 2024.
The average value of a cheque transaction also increased by 13.30% to GH¢79,067.32, indicating that while fewer cheques are being written, those that remain are increasingly associated with higher-value payments. That suggests the instrument continues to retain some relevance among businesses and institutions even as its overall share of the payments landscape declines.
The emerging pattern is therefore not simply one of digital payments replacing paper across every segment of the economy at the same pace. Instead, lower-frequency but larger cheque transactions are persisting alongside a much broader transition towards electronic settlement.
For banks, the shift could eventually reduce some of the operational costs associated with handling, clearing and reconciling paper instruments. Businesses can also benefit from faster confirmation, improved transaction records and more efficient reconciliation when payments are executed electronically.
But the deeper dependence on digital infrastructure creates a different set of risks. As increasingly large values move through electronic systems, operational outages, cyberattacks, fraud and failures in authentication or settlement infrastructure can have consequences that extend beyond individual customers.
The scale of the GIS illustrates those stakes. A payment infrastructure carrying more than GH¢9.00 trillion annually is no longer simply a convenience for financial institutions; it is part of the critical infrastructure supporting the functioning of the broader economy.
Recent developments in internet banking reinforce the direction of travel, with the value of internet banking transactions reported at GH¢383.82 billion in 2025. Together with the GIS figures and declining cheque volumes, the data point towards an increasingly digital architecture for moving money between households, companies, banks and institutions.
The policy challenge for the Bank of Ghana is consequently evolving. Earlier phases of payment-system development focused heavily on encouraging financial inclusion and persuading consumers and businesses to adopt electronic payment channels, but the next phase will require greater attention to resilience, cybersecurity and the ability of infrastructure to handle increasingly large values without disruption.
The transition also raises questions around concentration and systemic risk. When more economic activity depends on a smaller number of interconnected digital platforms and financial institutions, an operational failure at one critical point can have consequences across multiple parts of the financial system.
For Ghana, the benefits remain substantial. Faster settlement can improve business efficiency, strengthen the traceability of financial flows, reduce some transaction costs and make the formal financial system more responsive to the needs of businesses operating in an increasingly digital economy.
But the 2025 figures show that the transformation is about more than the popularity of mobile or internet payments. At the institutional level, the value moving electronically through Ghana’s financial architecture is increasing much faster than the number of transactions themselves.
That makes the rise to GH¢9.45 trillion one of the more important indicators of structural change in Ghana’s financial sector. It suggests the interbank system is becoming increasingly important for the settlement of large-value financial activity even as older payment instruments steadily lose ground.
The cheque is unlikely to disappear immediately, particularly where businesses continue to use it for high-value contractual and institutional transactions. But its declining volume makes the longer-term direction increasingly difficult to dispute.
Ghana’s payments economy is becoming more electronic, faster and increasingly centred on large-value digital flows. The challenge now is ensuring that the infrastructure carrying those trillions of cedis becomes more resilient at the same pace as the money moving through it.
