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An estate agency in Accra manages sixty flats across four blocks. Almost none of the rent arrives in cash — the law pushes it onto a wallet, a card or a bank transfer — so it comes in on the first through a payment service provider and reaches the client account on the third. The landlords expect their money, and the agency’s licence depends on paying them out.
The question nobody could answer cleanly was: whose money is it on the second?
On 6 November 2026 the Bank of Ghana answered. It matters most in real estate and construction, because most of what those businesses collect was never theirs — rent held for a landlord, service charges held for a block, a milestone payment held against work still to be certified.
What is happening?
Notice No. BG/GOV/SEC/2026/43, Management of Merchant Collection Funds by Settlement Banks and Payment Service Providers, is dated 6 November 2026, signed by the Secretary of the Bank, Aimee Vyda Quashie, and published on 9 November (Graphic Online and 3News, 9 November 2026). It is made under section 101 of the Payment Systems and Services Act, 2019 (Act 987), which lets the Bank make rules by notice for payment system supervision.
It is addressed to payment service providers (PSPs) and settlement banks, not to merchants. Its starting point is that PSPs “are not deposit-taking institutions and are therefore not permitted to hold, utilize, pledge, encumber, or otherwise exercise ownership rights over funds collected on behalf of merchants”.
From that follow seven requirements. Collections must be credited to a designated settlement account at an approved settlement bank, segregated from the PSP’s operational funds, and settled “strictly in accordance with the settlement periods agreed upon under the applicable SLA”. The PSP may not withdraw, pledge, lien, set off or otherwise encumber the funds, except to settle the merchant and to move fees duly earned. Settlement banks must operate those accounts solely for settlement. Both sides must keep audit trails, and the Bank of Ghana may require settlement-account statements.
The sentence that changes a business’s position is this one: such funds “shall remain the property of the respective merchants until settlement is effected in accordance with the terms and timelines specified in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) executed between the PSP and the merchant”.
Three things remain uncertain. The notice sets no maximum settlement period: it enforces whatever was agreed. It does not say what happens where an agreement names no period at all. And Act 987’s own definition of “service level agreement” describes a contract between a service provider and a PSP, not a merchant and a PSP, so the operative document is whichever agreement actually governs your collections, whatever it is titled. There is no transition period.
Why it matters economically
The flows are large: the Bank of Ghana’s Summary of Economic and Financial Data of 23 September 2026 records GH¢518.8 billion of mobile money transactions in August 2026. That is the total for all mobile money use; the Bank publishes no separate merchant-payment series, so none of it should be attributed to merchant collections.
The carry on a settlement delay is small. Take an illustrative agency collecting GH¢400,000 of rent on the first, settled after three days. At the average lending rate of 15.94% recorded for August 2026, bridging those days with borrowed money costs about GH¢520. That is not why this notice exists.
The number that matters is the whole balance. On 14 July 2026 the Bank of Ghana revoked the Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer licence of Zeepay Ghana Ltd (Notice No. BG/GOV/SEC/2026/21), stating that it had issued electronic money “without maintaining corresponding cash backing, resulting in a negative variance” and had ignored directives to back the balances of customers, agents and merchants. Those affected were given a telephone number.
That is the loss the new notice is designed to prevent: not slow money, but absent money. Before 6 November, collections sitting at a PSP were a contractual claim; now they are the merchant’s property, in an account the PSP may not borrow against. Our view is that this materially improves the merchant’s position — but it is a supervisory instrument, not an amendment to insolvency law, and how a court would treat those balances if a PSP failed has not been tested.
What it means for African businesses
This is a Ghanaian instrument. It binds PSPs and settlement banks licensed in Ghana and protects merchants collecting through them. Businesses elsewhere face the same question — whose money is it between the customer’s payment and the merchant’s bank account — answered by different rules, or by nothing but the contract. Each market is read separately rather than the continent as one; see our market-by-market view.
Within Ghana, any business whose customers pay through a PSP is affected. But the position is sharpest where the money collected is not the collector’s own, and in real estate and construction that is most of it.
A Ghanaian agency already carries its own duties over the same money. Act 1047 requires payment for a real estate transaction to be by bank draft, cheque, bank transfer or electronic money transfer, and forbids cash (section 45) — a sale or the grant of a lease is plainly caught by the definition in section 57, routine monthly rent under a running tenancy less clearly so. Once money is received, a client’s real estate funds must sit in a separate client’s account (section 46) and must not be commingled with the agency’s own (section 48). Section 30 lets the Real Estate Agency Council suspend a licence where an agent “fails, within a reasonable time, which shall not exceed one month, to payout moneys received into a client account, to the client”, and section 49 requires quarterly transaction reports.
So there are two clocks on one payment. The agency’s one-month outer limit starts when the tenant pays; the PSP’s settlement period runs inside it. The agency carries the mismatch, and must prove, per client and per month, when money was received and when it was paid out. Contractors face the same shape with retention and certified milestones — the constraints collected in our real estate and construction dossier.
A business paid straight into its own bank account is not affected, nor is a licensed electronic money issuer.
Technology and AI implications
The useful work is unglamorous. Hold the settlement terms per provider as data, not a PDF nobody opens. Match each settlement received against the collections that produced it, by reference, amount and date. Date-stamp receipt and payout for every client. The notice puts the record-keeping duty on PSPs and settlement banks, but those same records prove your compliance with section 30 and populate your quarterly returns.
Technology cannot shorten a settlement period you agreed to, make a provider solvent, or tell you whether your funds are segregated — only the provider and its settlement bank know that, and you have to ask. Reconciliation finds a shortfall after it has happened; it does not prevent one.
AI has little to add here, and claiming otherwise would be dishonest. Matching a settlement batch to the invoices behind it is deterministic arithmetic: a rules-based match on reference, amount and date is more accurate, cheaper and more auditable than a model. The one place a language model earns its keep is reading a stack of merchant agreements for the stated settlement period, fee basis and termination terms — a first pass for a human to check, not an answer. The gap between adopting a tool and integrating it is where most of this value is lost, as African firms are adopting AI, not integrating it sets out.
Practical business implications
- Find the agreement and read the settlement clause. If it states no period, there is nothing for the Bank of Ghana to enforce on timing. Ask for one in writing.
- Ask your provider, in writing, which settlement bank holds the designated settlement account and whether it is segregated from the provider’s operational funds. Keep the reply.
- Confirm the provider is licensed. The Bank of Ghana publishes the list of approved electronic money issuers and payment service providers; what such a list is worth is the subject of Ghana is naming unlicensed lenders.
- Reconcile daily, not monthly. Investigate a settlement one day late; a month is how long a gap takes to become a dispute with a landlord.
- Record two dates per client — money received, money paid out. That is your evidence under section 30.
- Price the float into your terms. If your provider settles on day three and you promise the landlord day two, you are lending. Say so, or change the promise.
- Keep service charges and retention out of the operating account. They were never yours, whatever the balance says.
RevenueStack perspective
Notice 43 does something unusual: it makes your own contract the operative instrument. It settles ownership — the money is yours while it sits elsewhere — then defers entirely to the agreement for timing. That is strong protection for a business that negotiated and documented a settlement period, and almost none for one that accepted a click-through terms page. Where a regulator defers to agreements, the agreement is the regulation — a logic that recurs wherever supervision runs through licensed intermediaries. The related discipline — treating a payment channel as an accounting system, not a convenience — is the subject of mobile money is a payment method, not a payment system.
Our view on where the risk actually sits for an estate or contracting business: not in three days of carry, but in the fact that few can state, per client and per month, what was collected, settled and paid out. That blind spot turns a late settlement into a landlord dispute and a provider failure into an unquantifiable loss. The fix is a rent roll or contract ledger that ingests settlement files and matches them to obligations — the kind of customer and business system that earns its cost in reconciliation time long before a regulator asks. The Zeepay revocation shows the Bank of Ghana will act — and what a merchant receives when it does: a support number, and whatever its own records can prove.
Conclusion
Ghana has fixed whose money is in transit and left when it moves to the contract you signed. For a business holding other people’s money — a letting agency, a property manager, a contractor against retention — that turns a vague risk into two tasks: get a settlement period written down, and be able to prove, client by client and month by month, what came in and what went out. The regulation raised the floor. The records are still yours to build.
Sources
- Notice No. BG/GOV/SEC/2026/43 — Management of Merchant Collection Funds by Settlement Banks and Payment Service Providers — Bank of Ghana, 2026-11-06
- New BoG directive: Payment Service Providers cannot hold merchant funds — Graphic Online, 2026-11-09
- BoG orders PSPs to segregate merchant settlement funds — 3News, 2026-11-09
- Payment Systems and Services Act, 2019 (Act 987) — Parliament of Ghana, 2019-05-13
- Real Estate Agency Act, 2020 (Act 1047) — Parliament of Ghana, 2020-12-29
- Notice No. BG/GOV/SEC/2026/21 — Revocation of the Licence of Zeepay Ghana Ltd — Bank of Ghana, 2026-07-14
- Summary of Economic and Financial Data — September 2026 — Bank of Ghana, 2026-09-23