By Stanley Senya
Accra, Aug. 27, GNA – The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has admitted WeWire, a Ghana-founded global cross-border infrastructure and payments fintech, into the Commission’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Sandbox to pilot the tokenisation of trade finance instruments.
The company joins eight other firms selected to test innovative virtual asset products under Ghana’s Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025 (Act 1154).
A statement issued in Accra said it would use the sandbox environment to explore how trade finance instruments could be represented and settled as digital tokens.
It said the initiative could address persistent capital inefficiencies, settlement delays and liquidity bottlenecks affecting cross-border trade across Africa and other emerging markets.
The statement said tokenising real-world trade finance assets could create a programmable, transparent and more immediate avenue for capital clearing and trade settlement.
Mr Eben Ghanney, the Chief Executive Officer of WeWire, said unlocking liquidity for businesses in emerging markets requires bringing institutional-grade assets and real-world trade into the digital age.
He said the SEC sandbox admission reinforced the company’s belief that African-built fintechs could meet high regulatory standards while addressing challenges affecting businesses on the continent.
Mr Ghanney said trade finance remained one of the major friction points for businesses seeking to move goods and money across borders.
“This Sandbox allows us to demonstrate how trade finance tokenisation can lower barriers, reduce friction, and drastically cut the costs associated with cross-border trade,” he said.
He said WeWire’s participation built on its previous engagement with the Bank of Ghana Regulatory Sandbox, where it worked with regulators to develop compliant blockchain-based payment solutions and stablecoin liquidity rails.
Under the SEC’s supervision, the company would explore how blockchain-based asset tokenisation could streamline trade finance workflows, optimise working capital for importers and exporters and enable settlement between traditional financial networks and digital asset rails.
It said the move comes amid growing interest in Ghana’s capital market in the tokenisation of traditional financial instruments, including Treasury bills, bonds and physical commodities.
The statement said the sandbox admission also coincided with the expansion of its B2B Application Programming Interface infrastructure, designed to enable financial institutions, fintechs and global enterprises to integrate embedded finance services into their platforms.
The infrastructure allows businesses to create multi-currency accounts, access localised fiat payment services across more than 100 countries and facilitate cross-border liquidity transactions, operates across more than 100 countries and provides virtual accounts, multi-currency wallets and payment infrastructure bridging fiat and stablecointransactions for businesses in emerging markets.
GNA
Edited by Benjamin Mensah