- Financial Fraud Cases Jump 48% as Crime Migrates to Digital Payments — BoG
Reported financial fraud cases across Ghana’s banking and digital payments ecosystem jumped 48% in 2025, with the Bank of Ghana warning that criminal activity is increasingly migrating away from traditional banks and into payment service providers, mobile money and other electronic channels.
Total reported cases across banks, Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions and Payment Service Providers rose from 16,733 in 2024 to 24,778 in 2025, while the value at risk increased from GH¢99 million to GH¢101 million, according to the central bank’s 2025 Fraud Report.
The increase came despite a decline in incidents within banks and SDIs, suggesting that the centre of gravity in financial crime is shifting towards Ghana’s rapidly expanding digital-finance ecosystem.
Payment Service Providers accounted for much of the deterioration. Fraud incidents in the PSP segment increased by 98% between 2022 and 2025, reflecting the growing exposure of electronic money and digital-payment systems to increasingly sophisticated criminal activity.
Matilda Asante-Asiedu, Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, said the trend represented more than a statistical change and pointed to a fundamental shift in the financial-crime landscape.
“Fraud activity is migrating from the traditional banking sector into the PSP space, concentrating on electronic money and digital payment channels,” she said in a keynote address at the 2026 Technical Committee Workshop of the Committee for Cooperation between Law Enforcement Agencies and the Banking Community, or COCLAB.
The warning comes as digital financial services have become embedded in everyday commerce across Ghana, supporting payments, transfers and retail transactions for millions of consumers and businesses.
That rapid expansion has helped deepen financial inclusion, but it has also widened the number of points through which criminals can attempt to exploit weaknesses in payment systems, customer behaviour and institutional coordination.
Mrs Asante-Asiedu said fraudsters were increasingly targeting gaps between financial institutions, payment systems, telecommunications platforms, customer-awareness frameworks and law-enforcement mechanisms.
“As our financial services become more digital, fraud risk has become ecosystem risk — and it demands an ecosystem-wide response,” she said.
The Bank of Ghana is consequently pushing for a restructuring of COCLAB from primarily a consultative and information-sharing forum into what it describes as a more strategic, proactive and results-driven platform capable of coordinating responses across regulators, banks, PSPs, telecommunications operators and law-enforcement agencies.
The proposed structure would establish two specialised working groups focusing on Public Sensitisation and Information Sharing, and Investigations, supported by a Steering Committee comprising heads of member institutions.
The working groups would carry out technical assessments, analyse emerging fraud typologies, recommend mitigation measures and support coordinated enforcement operations, while the Steering Committee would provide strategic direction and policy oversight.
The central bank argues that a faster-moving digital threat environment requires financial-crime enforcement to become equally agile.
COCLAB’s existing model has already produced results. Coordinated operations have targeted illegal foreign-exchange trading, unlicensed financial institutions and online lending operators, while information-sharing has supported investigations and prosecutions within the banking system.
One intelligence-led operation against illegal online loan operators in parts of Accra in 2023 resulted in 420 arrests, including three foreign nationals, while a recent banking-sector prosecution ended with an employee receiving a 10-year prison sentence for stealing GH¢1.2 million.
The Bank says such cases demonstrate the value of collaboration but also underline the need to move beyond occasional joint action towards a more permanent operational structure.
The urgency is being reinforced by Ghana’s ongoing Third Round Mutual Evaluation by the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa, or GIABA.
The assessment is examining Ghana’s framework for anti-money laundering, counter-financing of terrorism and counter-proliferation financing.
Mrs Asante-Asiedu warned that the outcome could have consequences extending far beyond financial crime statistics, affecting international perceptions of Ghana’s financial system, correspondent banking relationships, cross-border transactions and investor confidence.
That makes the effectiveness of Ghana’s fraud and financial-crime response an issue of broader financial-sector credibility.
Correspondent banks and international financial institutions increasingly assess jurisdictions not only on whether appropriate laws exist, but also on whether those laws are implemented effectively and whether suspicious activity is detected, investigated and prosecuted.
Weaknesses can raise compliance costs for domestic institutions and make cross-border banking relationships more difficult.
For the Bank of Ghana, the policy challenge is therefore twofold: preserve the benefits of digital finance while preventing the same systems from becoming a more attractive channel for fraud.
The central bank has placed particular emphasis on public awareness because many digital fraud schemes exploit customers directly through social engineering, phishing, impersonation and unauthorised access rather than attacking financial institutions themselves.
Technology-driven detection and stronger information-sharing between institutions are also expected to become increasingly important as criminal networks operate across multiple platforms.
Mrs Asante-Asiedu said COCLAB’s effectiveness should no longer be measured by the number of meetings convened or reports produced.
Instead, success should be assessed through stronger intelligence-sharing, successful investigations, asset recovery, improved compliance, greater customer awareness and a measurable reduction in financial-crime risk.
That shift in emphasis reflects the nature of the threat now confronting Ghana’s financial system.
Digital transactions have become everyday infrastructure and depend heavily on public confidence. If consumers begin to perceive mobile money, digital banking or electronic payments as unsafe, the consequences could extend beyond individual fraud losses to the wider adoption of digital finance.
The 48% increase in reported fraud cases therefore represents more than a deterioration in one year’s statistics.
It is evidence that financial crime is moving alongside technology.
For Ghana, the test will now be whether regulation, law enforcement and institutional coordination can move just as quickly preventing fraud before it occurs, recovering illicit funds when it does and protecting the trust on which the country’s expanding digital financial system increasingly depends.
