Hubtel Joins MTN to Combat Fraud Via Fintech Partner Exchange

April 9, 2026 | 5 minutes read

For many Ghanaians, mobile money has quietly replaced the traditional bank. Sending money across regions, paying for services, and running daily transactions now happens in seconds, without stepping into a banking hall.

That convenience has reshaped how people live and work. At the same time, it has introduced a reality that the ecosystem can no longer treat in isolation: fraud in digital payments.

Operating within Ghana’s fast-evolving payments landscape means engaging with fraud not as a distant risk, but as a live, cross-system challenge that follows the flow of transactions rather than staying within the boundaries of any single platform.

Fraud is no longer contained within individual systems. As interoperability deepens across platforms, fraudulent activity increasingly moves along the same pathways as legitimate transactions, exploiting gaps between institutions rather than weaknesses within one.

In such an environment, visibility becomes fragmented. No single institution has full end-to-end oversight across the entire transaction chain, yet each remains responsible for ensuring secure and reliable processing within its own domain. This creates a structural challenge that cannot be solved in isolation.

A significant portion of fraud does not originate within payment platforms themselves. In many cases, it begins outside the system through social engineering, user manipulation, or compromised credentials.

By the time a transaction is initiated, the system is often processing inputs that appear valid, even though the user behind them has already been influenced.

This distinction is critical. Fraud detection is not only about identifying technical anomalies within a platform, but also about recognizing behavioral signals that suggest compromised intent.

Without coordinated intelligence across institutions, identifying these patterns early enough becomes significantly more difficult.

These perspectives were reinforced during the Fintech Partner Exchange on Fraud and Collective Action hosted by MobileMoney Limited on April 2, 2026. The dialogue brought together stakeholders across the payments ecosystem to examine how collaboration can strengthen collective defenses against fraud.

Representing Hubtel, leaders including Mr Ernest Apenteng (General Manager), Godsway Akakpo (Revenue Assurance Manager), Francis Wilson (Head, Infrastructure and Payment), and Ebenezer Boffour (Head of Internal Affairs) were present at the engagement.

Speaking during the panel session, Mr Boffour highlighted a core reality: many fraudulent transactions enter the system after users have already been compromised externally.

“Once a user has been compromised, the transaction often proceeds as instructed. The real challenge is identifying such situations early enough to intervene,” he noted.

This underscores a limitation that platforms face individually. While internal monitoring systems can detect anomalies within their own environments, intervention is often most effective before a transaction is executed, when signs of compromise can still be intercepted.

This view aligns with broader industry insights shared during the dialogue. Clara Bawah Arthur, CEO of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GHIPSS), emphasized that interoperability in payments inherently extends to interoperability in fraud.

As systems become more connected, fraudulent activity can traverse platforms just as easily as legitimate transactions, making isolated defences insufficient.

Similarly, Joshua Edmondson, Board Chair of the Mobile Money Agents Association of Ghana, pointed to the role of user behaviour in fraud prevention, noting that many cases stem from users unknowingly disclosing sensitive information under pressure or deception.

From our standpoint, these insights reinforce a central principle, that fraud in a connected payments ecosystem is both a behavioural and systemic issue. Addressing it effectively requires coordinated visibility, shared intelligence, and aligned responses across institutions.

While platforms continue to strengthen internal controls, those measures alone are not sufficient in an environment where fraud can originate externally and move across multiple systems.

The ability to detect, share, and act on signals collectively is becoming just as important as the ability to process transactions securely at the platform level.

As Ghana’s digital payments ecosystem continues to expand, the pace and volume of transactions will only increase. With that growth comes both opportunity and risk.

Interoperability has made payments more accessible and efficient, but it has also created pathways that require stronger collective safeguards.

Sustaining trust in digital payments will depend not just on the strength of individual platforms, but on how effectively the ecosystem works together to protect it.

Fraud prevention in this context is not a standalone function. It is a shared responsibility that requires continuous collaboration, real-time intelligence, and coordinated action across all participants in the payments value chain.

Trust remains the foundation of digital financial systems. Protecting it will require more than isolated efforts. It will require a connected response to match a connected ecosystem.