Ghanaian exporters are routing payments through unofficial cash networks instead of banks, even as African institutions build a continent-wide system meant to replace costly cross-border transfers.
Eric Amaquandor, chief executive of Ghanaian manufacturer and exporter Amanex Company Limited, said his firm’s bank accounts have repeatedly been flagged for suspicious activity because of large, unexplained cash deposits. Tax officials and bankers then require the company to justify the source of the funds before releasing access to the accounts. The cash originates from clients in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, who settle invoices through informal channels rather than bank transfers.
Those clients pay intermediaries in Accra’s Tudu market, known locally as “Alhajis,” who convert the funds into Ghana cedis at rates the clients say beat what banks offer. The clients then deposit the CFA franc equivalent into Amanex’s accounts in their home countries on the intermediaries’ instructions. Amaquandor said the cash sometimes arrives in bags before his company can bank it. He is not the only exporter facing the pattern. John Defor, Director of Policy at the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), said several member companies trading within Africa report the same behaviour from clients who prefer cash to formal transfers.
The reluctance comes down to cost. The World Bank estimates Africa receives about $100 billion in remittances annually, with senders typically paying seven to eight percent in fees, a toll that costs the continent roughly $5 billion a year. Some transfers run far higher. A Techfocus24 test transfer of $322 to Nigeria this year cost $70 in fees, driven largely by SWIFT charges, or nearly 22 percent of the amount sent. AGI staff member Beauty Kafui Amoafo said a GHS4,800 payment she routed through two Bank of Africa accounts to settle a GHS300 hotel bill in Morocco cost her the cedi equivalent of $144 in fees, close to half the value transferred. The United Nations has set a target of three percent for African transfer costs; some industry figures argue even that is too high and want the ceiling closer to one percent.
The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) was built to solve exactly this problem. Launched by the African Export-Import Bank in 2022 to support the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), it lets businesses settle in local currencies without routing funds through a correspondent bank abroad. Amaquandor said Amanex has introduced clients to PAPSS, but many still prefer cash because the platform remains costlier than the black market. He said some clients have threatened to stop buying from Amanex altogether if it insists on formal payment routes.
Romeo Bugyei, chief executive of Ghanaian fintech firm IT Consortium, said PAPSS has not fully delivered on its original promise because transactions still get converted into dollars for lack of another reference currency between African currencies, which keeps costs elevated. He argues a common reference point, whether a shared currency or a gold-backed settlement standard similar to what BRICS nations use, would cut costs further than PAPSS currently can. Some fintechs, he added, are already turning to stablecoins sanctioned by the Bank of Ghana and other regulators, buying the coins in the sending country and cashing them out in the receiving country at a lower cost than bank channels.
The system is expanding even as those criticisms persist. PAPSS now connects more than 160 participating banks and fintechs across the continent, according to Afreximbank, and in July 2026 the Bank of Central African States joined the network on behalf of the six-nation central African bloc it serves. A pilot launched with limited Bank of Ghana approval in 2025 allows cedi-to-naira transfers between Ghana and Nigeria to settle without dollar conversion; the service expanded to cover Nigeria-to-Ghana transfers this year and, according to Techfocus24’s reporting, is expected to scale further.
Bugyei said regulatory fragmentation compounds the cost problem. IT Consortium has operated in Rwanda for three years but has earned close to nothing there because of licensing restrictions, he said, and a similar request pending with Liberia’s central bank has waited more than a year without a response. Sabine Mensah, Deputy Chief Executive of the AfricaNenda Foundation, said stakeholder consultations across the continent point to the same conclusion: outdated technology is not the barrier to cheaper cross-border payments, fragmented regulation is. The African Association of Central Banks instructed its Payment Systems Integration Task Force in November 2025 to lead the harmonisation push, with AfricaNenda in a supporting role.
Ghana is also moving to align data rules with the effort. Solomon Richardson, Director of Technical Services at the National Information Technology Agency, said the country is preparing to award a contract for a national data exchange that will connect to a continental exchange built by the Smart Africa Alliance, currently piloted between Ghana, Benin and Rwanda. Requests for data would be verified through Ghana’s National Identification Authority before being released, he said, and legal teams from the three pilot countries have begun work to make their data protection laws interoperable. AfricaNenda estimates full regulatory harmonisation across the continent could take up to a decade.
