Fraud in Ghana’s financial sector is migrating fast — away from traditional banks and toward the mobile money and digital payment platforms that now handle the bulk of everyday transactions, according to a new Bank of Ghana report.
The central bank’s Financial Stability Department found that reported fraud cases across banks, specialized deposit-taking institutions, and payment service providers jumped from 16,733 in 2024 to 24,778 in 2025 — a 48% increase. The total value at risk rose more modestly, from GH¢99 million to GH¢101 million.
But that headline number masks a sharper story: nearly all of the growth came from payment service providers, the mobile money operators and fintechs that have become the primary gateway to financial services for millions of Ghanaians.
Where the Growth Is Coming From
Fraud cases at payment service providers rose 54% year-over-year, from 15,673 to 24,124 — meaning PSPs alone accounted for 97% of all fraud cases reported in 2025. The value at risk in that sector nearly doubled, climbing 95% from GH¢19 million to GH¢37 million.
| Sector | Year | Fraud Count | Count Change | Value at Risk (GH¢) | Value Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Industry | 2024 | 16,733 | – | 99 million | – |
| Industry | 2025 | 24,778 | +48% | 101 million | +2% |
| Banks | 2024 | 716 | – | 75 million | – |
| Banks | 2025 | 472 | -34% | 57 million | -24% |
| SDIs | 2024 | 344 | – | 4.5 million | – |
| SDIs | 2025 | 182 | -47% | 8 million | +77% |
| PSPs | 2024 | 15,673 | – | 19 million | – |
| PSPs | 2025 | 24,124 | +54% | 37 million | +95% |
The Bank of Ghana attributes the spike largely to the accelerating shift toward digital payment channels. More transactions moving through mobile money means more opportunities for fraud — and the report notes that lower digital literacy among users in this segment is compounding the problem, even as the sector drives significant gains in financial inclusion.
Zoom out to a four-year view and the pattern sharpens further. Between 2022 and 2025, PSP fraud cases rose 98% and value at risk climbed 42%, while banks and SDIs moved in the opposite direction — posting real declines in both fraud incidents and financial exposure over the same period.
Banks and Credit Unions Buck the Trend
Traditional banks reported 472 fraud cases in 2025, down 34% from 716 in 2024, and value at risk fell 24% to GH¢57 million. ATM and point-of-sale fraud remains the most common type by volume, but cash suppression — a scheme in which staff or insiders manipulate cash records — produced the single largest financial hit.
Its value at risk exploded to GH¢40.7 million, an 18-fold jump from GH¢2.3 million in 2024, driven largely by one outlier case involving GH¢36 million.
| Fraud Type | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATM/Card/POS Fraud | 34.32 | 3,528.83 | 4,144.92 | 2,429.34 |
| Cheque Fraud | 5,041.55 | 6,157.59 | 28.05 | 550.62 |
| Cyber/Email Fraud | 4,395.32 | 10,522.00 | 933.11 | 336.99 |
| Burglary | 261.71 | 269.00 | 738.98 | 2,924.45 |
| E-Money Fraud | 787.39 | 5,355.14 | 4,084.21 | 4,892.02 |
| Forgery and Manipulation of Documents | 33,074.89 | 7,466.42 | 53,554.34 | 5,258.94 |
| Fraudulent Withdrawals | 7,085.55 | 13,057.13 | 1,823.04 | 3,974.10 |
| Lending/Credit Fraud | 275.14 | 657.00 | 1,346.70 | 234.30 |
| Impersonation | 1,339.18 | 674.50 | 5,769.22 | 148.04 |
| Others | 24.85 | 1,961.72 | 580.07 | 1,333.53 |
| Remittance | 65.60 | 1,555.00 | 2,827.38 | 11.95 |
| Cash Theft (Cash Suppression) | 3,963.36 | 16,702.72 | 3,872.71 | 42,429.14 |
| Sim Swap-Related Fraud | 0.00 | 4,633.21 | 0.00 | 16.11 |
| TOTAL | 56,348.86 | 72,540.26 | 79,702.73 | 64,539.53 |
Specialized deposit-taking institutions, which include rural and community banks, saw fraud cases fall 47% to 182, even as their value at risk rose 77% to GH¢8 million.
Forgery and document manipulation drove that increase, with a single institution reporting GH¢4.1 million in losses from one incident. Rural and community banks bore a disproportionate share of the sector’s cash suppression cases — accounting for 51% of them.
An Inside Job, Less Often
One of the report’s more encouraging findings involves staff involvement in fraud. Across banks and SDIs, the number of employees implicated in fraudulent activity fell 40%, from 365 in 2024 to 219 in 2025. Cash theft and cash suppression still made up the majority of these cases, at 63%, though that share is down from 75% the previous year.
Institutions also dismissed fewer staff overall — 75 in 2025 versus 155 in 2024 — but of those terminated, 59% were let go over cash theft-related fraud specifically.
Notably, while only 22% of cash suppression cases across banks and SDIs originated in banks, banks accounted for 96% of the associated financial losses — underscoring that even rare incidents in the banking sector tend to be far costlier than the more frequent cases at rural and community banks.
The Bigger Picture
Looking at the four-year trend from 2022 to 2025, total fraud losses at banks and SDIs actually peaked in 2024 at roughly GH¢79.7 million before falling to GH¢64.5 million in 2025. Of that latest total, only about GH¢3.7 million — roughly 5% — was recovered.
The Bank of Ghana’s takeaway is a call for coordinated action among financial institutions, regulators, and law enforcement as digital adoption accelerates.
But the data points to a specific vulnerability: the same mobile money platforms that have expanded financial access across Ghana are now the country’s fastest-growing fraud risk, and the report offers little detail yet on what specific interventions — beyond “enhanced regulatory frameworks” — the central bank plans to deploy in response.
