- Fintechs Account for 97.00% of Fraud Incidents as Ghana’s Digital Payments risks Mount
Ghana’s fast-growing fintech industry is becoming the new pressure point in the country’s digital fraud landscape, with payment service providers and financial technology platforms accounting for about 97.00% of recorded fraud incidents, even as traditional banks appear to be recording a decline.
The shift, disclosed by Ebenezer Boffour, Head of Internal Affairs at Hubtel, during JoyNews’ Digital Economy Forum, raises a difficult question for Ghana’s digital finance ecosystem: has the country expanded digital payments faster than it has built the trust, controls and public awareness needed to protect users?
Speaking during the forum, Mr Boffour said recent industry data showed that fraud within fintechs and payment service providers was increasing and required a coordinated response from banks, telecommunications companies, regulators and digital payment firms.
“For now, I would say we are going upwards, looking at the report that was released recently,” he said. “About 97.00% of the total fraud that happened is coming from fintechs or payment service providers.”
The figure is striking, but its meaning requires careful interpretation. Mr Boffour was not suggesting that fintech platforms are necessarily the original targets of every fraud attempt. Rather, he argued that criminals are increasingly using them as channels through which stolen funds can be moved quickly, fragmented and routed away from victims before detection systems respond.
That distinction matters. Ghana’s payment service providers sit at the centre of a complex financial web linking banks, mobile money wallets, merchants, consumers, cards, apps and online commerce. Their strength is convenience. Their risk is the same: speed, access and interoperability can be exploited by fraudsters if controls are weak or if users are poorly informed.
“Fraudsters are looking for the point where they can immediately target and quickly move away the funds,” Mr Boffour said.
His comments expose one of the most important risks in Ghana’s digital payments transition. The country has successfully moved millions of people into electronic payments, mobile money, instant transfers and app-based commerce. But fraudsters have followed the money. They are no longer attacking only bank accounts or traditional payment channels. They are targeting the edges of the system — merchant platforms, payment gateways, apps, wallets and lesser-known digital channels where consumer vigilance may be weaker.
Mr Boffour said criminals often avoid directly attacking established bank accounts or large mobile money wallets because consumers have become more familiar with impersonation attempts involving major telecommunications companies. Years of public education by large telecom operators have made many users cautious when they receive suspicious calls or messages claiming to come from known mobile money brands.
But the same level of caution may not exist when consumers interact with smaller fintech applications, merchant payment links, online checkout platforms or unfamiliar payment service providers. This creates an uneven trust environment. The public may know how to respond to common mobile money scams, but may be less alert when fraud is dressed up as a delivery app, a merchant payment portal, an online store, a loan platform or a digital receipt verification channel.
That gap is now becoming a vulnerability for the entire system. Digital finance works as an ecosystem. A user may fund a wallet from a bank account, pay through a fintech platform, settle a merchant and receive confirmation through a third-party system. If fraud enters through one point, the damage may spread across the chain.
Mr Boffour therefore warned against treating fraud as an isolated institutional problem. He said banks, fintech firms, mobile network operators and regulators must respond collectively because no single institution controls the entire transaction journey.
This is perhaps the most important policy message from his intervention. Ghana’s digital payments market has become too interconnected for fraud prevention to remain fragmented. A weakness in onboarding, identity verification, merchant screening, transaction monitoring or consumer education at one institution can become a reputational and financial risk for the whole ecosystem.
The distinction between fraud count and fraud value also deserves attention. Although fintechs and payment service providers accounted for the overwhelming majority of incidents, Mr Boffour said the value of losses was more evenly distributed between banks and non-bank platforms.
“When it comes to transaction count, fintechs are trending upwards. But when it comes to the amounts, it is about 50-50,” he said.
This means policymakers must resist the temptation to focus only on the amount of money stolen. Large-value bank fraud may attract attention because the losses are heavier. But frequent low-value or mid-value fraud through fintech channels can be equally dangerous because it erodes public confidence transaction by transaction.
A digital payments ecosystem can survive isolated losses. It cannot survive widespread mistrust. If consumers begin to believe that payment links are unsafe, fintech apps are vulnerable, merchant platforms are unreliable or digital transfers are difficult to reverse, the country’s transition towards a cash-lite economy will suffer.
That is why the 97.00% figure is more than a fraud statistic. It is a trust indicator.
Ghana’s fintech sector has been one of the most important engines of financial inclusion, payments innovation and small business digitisation. Fintech firms have simplified collections for merchants, enabled instant settlements, supported digital commerce and helped bridge gaps between banks and consumers. But the same sector must now confront the cost of scale.
Fast growth brings visibility. Visibility attracts criminals. Criminals test the weakest points. And in many emerging digital markets, those weak points are not always in core technology systems; they are often found in customer education, merchant due diligence, account verification, transaction limits, dispute resolution and real-time fraud intelligence.
The lesson is clear. Fintech regulation cannot be limited to licensing and innovation promotion. It must include stronger operational risk supervision, mandatory fraud reporting, shared blacklists, tighter merchant onboarding, common customer education standards and faster collaboration with banks and telecom operators when suspicious funds move across platforms.
For fintech firms, this is also a business survival issue. Trust is their most valuable asset. A payment platform may offer convenience, speed and lower transaction costs, but if users associate it with fraud risk, adoption will slow and merchants will reconsider reliance on digital channels.
For banks, the matter is equally urgent. Even if bank fraud incidents are declining, banks remain connected to fintech platforms through account funding, settlement, cards, collections and transfers. A bank cannot fully protect its customer if stolen funds can be moved rapidly through another part of the ecosystem before recovery systems activate.
For regulators, the challenge is to build a framework that is firm without suffocating innovation. Ghana needs fintech growth, but it also needs fintech discipline. The country must avoid a regulatory posture that celebrates digital finance expansion while reacting too slowly to fraud patterns that are already visible.
The public education gap must also be closed. Large telecom firms have invested heavily in fraud awareness, but smaller fintechs may not have the same reach. That uneven communication leaves consumers exposed. Regulators could consider requiring licensed payment service providers to run continuous fraud awareness campaigns, publish verified customer support channels and participate in common industry education initiatives.
There is also a case for stronger real-time intelligence sharing. Fraudsters exploit delay. If one platform identifies a suspicious account, wallet, merchant ID, phone number or payment pattern, that information must be shared quickly and safely across the ecosystem. Otherwise, the same criminal network will simply migrate from one platform to another.
Mr Boffour’s warning therefore lands at a decisive moment. Ghana’s digital payments industry has grown from a convenience layer into critical financial infrastructure. Once a system becomes infrastructure, failure is no longer private. It becomes systemic.
The country must now ask whether its fraud controls, public education and regulatory coordination are strong enough for the size of the digital economy it has built.
Fintechs have helped Ghana move faster into the future of payments. But fraud is now testing whether that future is secure. The risk is not only that money will be stolen. The bigger risk is that trust will be stolen with it.
And once public trust in digital finance is lost, recovering it may cost far more than the fraud itself.
