Ghana Enacts Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill 2025

Ghana legalized cryptocurrency trading through the Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill 2025, which establishes a supervised licensing regime for exchanges, custodians, broker-dealers, payment gateways, and other virtual asset service providers. The law preserves the Ghanaian cedi as the country's sole legal tender while allowing individuals to buy, sell, and hold virtual assets under a compliance framework. Oversight is split between the Bank of Ghana and the Securities and Exchange Commission, supported by designated agencies for financial intelligence, consumer protection, and law enforcement. Regulators will roll out phased licensing and supervisory rules during 2026 that include application windows, fit-and-proper testing for management, operational readiness checks, and technical guidance on custody, disclosures, and conflict management. Authorized VASPs must implement customer due diligence, know-your-customer checks, anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing programs, transaction monitoring, recordkeeping, timely reporting, custody segregation, recovery and resolution plans, and solvency and liquidity buffers aligned to their business model and risk profile. Consumer protection measures require segregation of client assets, daily reconciliation, multi-signature and cold storage standards, insurance where applicable, and independent auditing, and supervisors will have powers to pursue misleading promotions and unlicensed offerings. About 3 million Ghanaians, roughly 17 percent of adults, already interact with digital assets and informal crypto activity is estimated at approximately three billion dollars annually. Existing operators serving Ghanaian users must register and strengthen governance, compliance, travel-rule data exchange, sanctions screening, incident response, vendor management, and documented recovery plans to continue operating. Banks and payment firms must reassess correspondent risk and partner due diligence, and exchanges and fintechs can pursue partnerships to provide regulated custody, merchant services, and remittance services under the new framework. Ghana's approach follows similar moves in neighboring countries and aligns with trends in Nigeria and Kenya toward formal VASP oversight. Enforcement will rely on information sharing, on-site and thematic inspections, robust data collection from domestic entities, and cooperation with foreign regulators to trace funds and obtain records for offshore platforms and decentralized venues. Key dates include phased rulemaking and licensing windows in 2026, consultation papers on custody and disclosures, and technical standards for the travel rule and wallet security, and firms are advised to prepare license applications, board and management structures, AML operations, custody segregation, and audit readiness ahead of those milestones. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/ghana-legalizes-crypto-vasp-law/

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