Lessons Learnt from Ghana’s eCedi Pilot

The Bank of Ghana recently briefed the Payments Canada Summit on its CBDC work, the eCedi.

Ghana has a programme of digitisation to boost financial inclusion and economic growth. Even though the unbanked population has fallen dramatically, a third of the population remains without a formal bank account. Internet coverage is also not universal across the country. As a result, the eCedi project is pursuing a token-based system distributed via commercial players - one mobile money provider, two banks and two Payment Service Providers (PSPs).

Two of the three pilot sites are online and one offline. The online pilots use existing banking apps and involved person-to-person (P2P), wallet-to-bank, and merchant and bill payments. In the offline experiment the eCedi is distributed via smart card. It concentrated on merchant payments and was run purely by the Bank without commercial players. The reasons for the focus on merchant payments, according to the Bank of Ghana, is that, as of 2017, 99% of these transactions were still carried out in cash.

The Bank of Ghana is testing three things:

• Can the currency work for consecutive offline payments?

• Will the target users be able to use it?

• Will they want to use it?

Survey results of those who have used it so far have been positive. The likelihood of merchants wanting to use it rose from 45% before the pilot to 65%, and for consumers from 48% to 67%.

In terms of lessons learnt, the Bank of Ghana noted that central banks must remember that the CBDC is a currency first and foremost, not a wallet for channel; that you must have a human-centred design; that you must design for your country’s context; and must be aware that the process is resource intensive.