As mobile money continues to dominate Ghana’s digital financial landscape, banking and financial consultant Dr. Richmond Atuahene is calling for sweeping regulatory reforms to ensure the sector remains innovative, competitive, and financially stable.
Following concerns over regulatory arbitrage, rising fraud, and the growing systemic importance of mobile money, Dr. Atuahene believes the country’s regulatory framework must evolve beyond its current structure to keep pace with the rapid transformation of digital finance.
He argues that future regulation should focus less on who provides a financial service and more on the risks created by the service itself. In his view, this would help preserve financial inclusion while strengthening consumer protection and safeguarding the broader financial system.
To achieve that balance, he proposes three key policy reforms.
Regulate the Service, Not the Provider
At the heart of Dr. Atuahene’s recommendations is the adoption of an activity-based regulatory framework. Under this approach, the same regulatory standards would apply to any institution offering the same financial service, regardless of whether it is a traditional bank, a mobile money operator or a fintech company.
Simply put, if two institutions provide similar services, such as payments, digital savings or lending, they should operate under the same compliance requirements.
Dr. Atuahene argues that this “same activity, same regulation” principle would eliminate the regulatory gaps that currently allow institutions to operate under different rules while offering similar financial products.
He says the approach would create a level playing field, reduce opportunities for regulatory arbitrage, and strengthen confidence in Ghana’s digital financial ecosystem. At the same time, he cautions that regulators must carefully define financial activities to avoid creating new loopholes or unintentionally slowing innovation.
Strengthen Cross-Sector Intelligence Sharing
Dr. Atuahene also recommends stronger collaboration among regulators overseeing different parts of Ghana’s financial and telecommunications sectors. As mobile money increasingly cuts across banking, telecommunications and digital technology, isolated supervision is no longer sufficient, he argues.
Instead, institutions should routinely share intelligence, regulatory information and emerging risk assessments to detect fraud, cybersecurity threats and other vulnerabilities before they escalate into broader financial stability concerns.
According to him, greater coordination would enable regulators to respond more quickly to evolving digital risks while improving oversight of an increasingly interconnected financial ecosystem.
Adopt Risk-Based Regulation
The third recommendation is the introduction of a comprehensive risk-based regulatory framework, where supervisory attention is determined by the level of risk posed by each institution or activity rather than applying identical oversight across the board.
Dr. Atuahene explains that under such a system, regulators would devote more resources to monitoring institutions or activities capable of causing the greatest financial harm, while reducing unnecessary compliance burdens on lower-risk operators.
He believes this would make supervision more efficient, improve the use of limited regulatory resources and better protect consumers and the financial system as digital finance continues to expand.
However, he acknowledges that implementing risk-based regulation is not without challenges. Determining which institutions pose the highest risks can be complex, and regulators may face pressure to classify more activities as high-risk in order to secure greater supervisory resources.
Despite these difficulties, he argues that the approach remains one of the most effective ways of achieving proportional, targeted and forward-looking regulation.
The Bottomline
Dr. Atuahene maintains that Ghana’s mobile money success story must now be matched by equally modern regulation. As digital financial services become increasingly integrated into everyday economic activity, he believes reforms should focus on closing regulatory gaps, improving coordination among oversight institutions and ensuring that supervision reflects the actual risks posed by financial activities.
According to him, adopting activity-based regulation, strengthening intelligence sharing and implementing risk-based supervision would help create a safer, fairer and more resilient mobile money ecosystem.
