The Ghana Deposit Protection Corporation (GDPC) covers eligible cedi deposits at BoG-licensed banks and specialised deposit-taking institutions up to GHS 6,250 per depositor per institution under the Ghana Deposit Protection Act 2016 and subsequent GDPC schedules. Membership is statutory for universal banks chartered under the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act 930 (2016) — GCB Bank PLC, Ecobank Ghana, Standard Chartered Ghana, Absa Bank Ghana, Stanbic Bank Ghana, and their universal-bank peers — and the ceiling applies across all balances at the same institution combined: current account, savings, fixed deposits, and channel-linked sub-accounts are netted before the GHS 6,250 cover is calculated. Verify the current ceiling on gdpc.com.gh before relying on it; the absolute number has been adjusted from the original statutory figure on a periodic schedule.
MTN Mobile Money is NOT GDPC-covered — and this is the single most important structural fact in Ghanaian retail digital payments. MTN's mobile-money product is operated by MTN Mobile Money Ltd, a separately-licensed subsidiary, under a Bank of Ghana Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer (DEMI) licence issued under the Payment Systems and Services Act 987 (2019), not a banking licence. Customer float is held in segregated trust accounts at custodian commercial banks; the trust ring-fences the float from MTN's corporate balance sheet, but the individual MoMo user does not hold a direct bank-customer relationship with the custodian. The user holds a creditor claim against the trust, and the trust holds the bank-customer relationship. This is categorically different from a chartered-bank deposit, where the depositor and the bank have a direct contractual relationship and GDPC cover attaches per depositor per institution. Vodafone Cash, AirtelTigo Money, and Zeepay sit on the same DEMI class and inherit the same outcome.
The headline cedi ceiling is small in absolute USD terms. At a USD/GHS rate near 16 the GDPC cover of GHS 6,250 is roughly USD 400 — substantially smaller than FDIC ($250,000), FSCS (£85,000), or the EU DGS harmonised ceiling (€100,000), and smaller again than Nigeria's NDIC DMB ceiling (₦5,000,000 ≈ USD 3,300) or Kenya's KDIC ceiling (KES 500,000 ≈ USD 3,300). The protection is statutory and real, but the absolute envelope is calibrated for the domestic median retail balance, not for high-net-worth or USD-equivalent use cases. Depositors with cedi balances above GHS 6,250 should split funds across multiple GDPC-member universal banks to layer cover; the per-institution ceiling does not aggregate across a single banking group.
See the bog.gov.gh licensee register and gdpc.com.gh insured-institution list for current licence and GDPC status, and the Reuters, GhanaWeb, Citi News, and Joy Online coverage of the 2017–2018 banking-sector cleanup and the subsequent operationalisation of GDPC for the primary disclosures behind the universal-bank vs DEMI licence-class distinction.