Payment firm Dash App has been ordered to stop operations by the Bank of Ghana.
The platform, whose focus is the development of a unified alternative payment network for people in Africa by leveraging the continent’s Mobile Money network, has been growing, and we even covered them in April 2021.
It has been running operations in Ghana since 2019.
The reason for the cease order? Well, according to the Head of Fintech and Innovation at BoG, Kwame A. Oppong, who wrote a letter to the CEO of Spektra Technologies, the regulator noted that Dash app was offering services without approval.
Some of the cited operations that broke the law include cross border payments, wallet creations and bill/utility payments.
The regulator adds that the firm should have the appropriate approval before it can proceed to run its operations in the country.
Dash already has big ambitions. It has started aggregating more than 200 mobile money wallets into a single wallet that could work and be used extensively in Africa.
When we had a chat with the team, Dash reported that it had already added 6 wallets to its platform. The 6 had already been completed in Kenya and Ghana.
“We’re however taking a page from AliPay/WeChat Pay’s playbook by building value-added services on top of our platform. This will allow users on Dash to access services in a single app,” Prince Boakye, Founder & CEO had said.
Just the other day, Dash raised $32.8 million funding to fund its plans.
It will be interesting to see how the issue will be addressed in the coming days. Nonetheless, with strict regulations guiding fintechs across the world, it is likely the platform will get the necessary approvals before it is allowed back to business.
