Cellulant acquires PSP license in Ghana

As of January 2021, 38.9% of the population aged 15 years and older had a mobile money account in Ghana. However, cash remains a dominant preference for payments. One of the contributing factors for preference of cash over digital payments is the high costs of digital payments that are often passed on to users, a lack of trust in, or familiarity with digital payments, according to the press release.

To curb these inefficiencies in digital payments, Cellulant has successfully rolled out Tingg, a digital payments platform enabling businesses and their consumers to accept and make payments seamlessly. This announcement comes after the Central Bank of Ghana issued Cellulant a Payment Services Provider (PSP) license.

The PSP license allows Cellulant to aggregate merchant services, process financial services, acquire merchants, deploy POS systems, and aggregate payments for banks, institutions, and the general public. The license is a requirement under the Payment Services Act 2019, which mandates that all financial technology or digital payments companies be licensed by the Bank of Ghana before they can operate in the country.

The Bank of Ghana redefined the categories and permissible activities for financial technology companies with PSP enhanced licenses. Allowed services include mobile payments, bulk payments, and mobile banking. This license also allows for the provision of 3rd party payment gateways, a marketplace for duly regulated financial service providers, merchant acquisition and aggregation, the printing, and presentation of EMV cards, inward international remittance services, as well as limited use of closed-loop virtual cards.