Ghana's mobile money market is moving fast — 954 million transactions worth GH¢492.9 billion in a single month — and Visa is betting a new software toolkit can plug virtual card payments directly into that flow.
The payments giant is rolling out a software development kit (SDK) that lets banks, mobile money operators, and fintechs embed virtual card functionality inside their existing apps, without building the underlying infrastructure from scratch. The toolkit bundles issuer processing, card tokenization, and Visa's own compliance and security checks into a single package.
What the SDK Actually Does
Rather than asking a fintech or bank to construct card issuance systems from the ground up, the SDK hands them a ready-made layer they can drop into a product they have already shipped. Visa said the approach is aimed squarely at markets where weak payment infrastructure has slowed digital financial services rollout.
The toolkit also supports e-commerce transactions, remittances, and humanitarian disbursements. A "Tap to Pay" feature — enabling contactless payments by tapping a phone at checkout terminals — is expected to launch soon.
Godfrey Sullivan, Visa's Senior Vice President for Products and Solutions across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the goal is to let issuers bring "trusted digital payment experiences to consumers faster" while opening up new domestic and cross-border use cases.
Ghana's Numbers Make the Case
The timing is deliberate. Bank of Ghana payment statistics show registered mobile money accounts climbed to 84.6 million by June 2025, up from 76.4 million a year earlier. Of those, 26.4 million accounts were active in the same period.
Mobile wallet float balances hit a record GH¢40 billion that month — a figure that signals just how much value Ghanaians are parking in digital wallets rather than moving through traditional bank accounts. Visa's pitch is that virtual cards can extend card payment rails to exactly those customers.
Eleven Markets, One Toolkit
Issuers already using the SDK are operating across eleven markets in Africa and Central Asia: Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Comoros, Mauritius, and Afghanistan.
Tanzania Commercial Bank has confirmed plans to use the SDK to widen digital adoption among its customers and merchants and expand the locations where its cardholders can pay. That makes it one of the most visible early adopters on the continent.
For Ghana specifically, the convergence of rapidly digitizing financial services and a massive mobile wallet user base gives Visa a compelling entry point. The country's fintech sector has spent years building mobile-first products — the SDK essentially offers those builders a shortcut into the global card network without a full infrastructure rebuild.
Security Built In
One of the more consequential aspects of the SDK is that Visa's compliance and security checks ship as part of the package. That matters in markets where smaller fintechs might struggle to meet card network security standards independently. By bundling tokenization and compliance into the toolkit itself, Visa lowers the bar for who can safely issue virtual cards.
Whether Ghana's mobile money operators and banks move quickly to adopt the SDK remains to be seen. But with nearly GH¢493 billion flowing through mobile wallets every month, the incentive to capture even a slice of that volume through virtual card rails is hard to ignore.