Arrel shows Ghanaian banks how to build bankable digital-asset infrastructure

Sybrin hosted Payments in Motion: Ghana 2026 at the Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra, bringing together regulators, financial institutions, payments stakeholders and technology specialists. The morning forum covered Electronic Payment Orders. In the afternoon innovation showcase, Nicholas Allen, CEO and co-founder of Arrel, presented "Building Bankable Digital-Asset Infrastructure: from custody to stablecoin settlement to compliance".

Allen set out Ghana's move to a regulated market: the Bank of Ghana's policy position on activity-based licensing in November 2025, the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act (Act 1154) passed on 19 December 2025, FAQs from the Bank of Ghana and the SEC in February 2026, 11 firms admitted to the SEC sandbox in March 2026, and full licensing targeted for 2027. Banks that engage supervisors now, and build the controls and evidence, will be ready when licensing opens. "Banks need control, not hype."

Connecting a bank to digital assets today means one integration per counterparty across liquidity, custody, ramps, compliance and chains. Allen showed how DAPL replaces them with one API, one policy engine and one audit trail while the bank keeps control of custody, then switched to the browser to demonstrate DAPL live, including a multi-venue order book.

For a Ghanaian bank, he described stablecoins as a settlement rail behind the cedi, with fiat at both ends: cross-border B2B payments for importers, inward diaspora remittances through licensed partners, and treasury and USD liquidity across several venues under one policy. His advice was to start with one corridor or treasury use case, run a controlled pilot and produce a full audit trail for the board and for conversations with the Bank of Ghana and the SEC. "Be ready on day one of licensing, not starting on day one."