Answers, first sentence first
Questions weget asked.
Every answer here opens with the answer. Yes, no, nothing, not yet, and then the detail. Two of them are still empty, and they are the two about money.
The basics
Paying with a tap
What a customer has to do, what they need on their phone, and how long it takes.
Does the customer need to install an app?
No. Tapping the tag opens a web page in whatever browser the phone already has. There is nothing to download, nothing to sign up for, and no account to create. This is the single biggest reason the design uses NFC tags rather than a wallet app: asking a customer at a counter to install something is where almost every merchant-present payment product in the region has died.
Which phones work?
Any phone with NFC, which is most Android phones sold in Ghana in the last several years and every iPhone from the XS onward. On iPhone, NFC tag reading is built into the camera and lock screen, so it works without any setup. A phone without NFC cannot tap, and for the pilot that customer pays the way they do today.
Which mobile money networks are supported?
MTN Mobile Money, AirtelTigo Money and Telecel Cash. The customer enters the number they want debited and the network is detected from the prefix.
How long does a payment take?
About twenty seconds in normal conditions, most of which is the customer entering their PIN. The mobile money prompt has a 180-second window to be approved, and the pay screen counts that window down honestly rather than spinning indefinitely. If it closes without approval, nothing is charged.
For merchants
Running a counterwith a tag on it
What you need, what it costs, and how you know the money arrived.
What does a merchant need?
A tag on the counter and a phone number to receive SMS. There is no terminal to buy, no card reader, no till integration and nothing to plug in. The tag is passive: it has no battery and needs no power or network of its own.
What does it cost?
To supply[PLACEHOLDER: pricing not yet published. Fill in the per-transaction rate, any monthly fee, and who bears the mobile money charge before this page goes live.]
What happens if the shop has no internet?
The tag needs none, but the customer’s phone does. The tag is passive and stores only a URL, so the network connection that matters is the customer’s own mobile data, not the shop’s. In a spot with no coverage at all, the payment cannot complete, and the screen says so rather than appearing to succeed.
How does a merchant know they were paid?
An SMS for every payment, plus a dashboard listing every transaction and a printable statement for a chosen date range. The SMS is deliberately not the only record: a message can be delayed by the network, so the dashboard is the source of truth and the SMS is the notification.
Security
Cloning, swappingand replays
The three attacks people ask about, and what actually happens in each.
Can someone copy the tag or swap it for their own?
Copying it does not work, and swapping it is visible to the customer. Each tap is signed inside the chip by a key unique to that tag, which was never written down anywhere and cannot be read out. The signature covers a counter that only ever increases, so a URL captured from a genuine tap is already stale by the time anyone reuses it. And because the pay screen shows the merchant name and code before any amount is entered, a tag swapped for a different merchant’s shows the wrong shop, which is exactly the moment a customer should stop.
How is this different from a QR code?
A QR code is a picture, so anyone with a printer can make one and anyone with tape can put it over yours. An NFC tag of this type is an active chip that performs a cryptographic operation on every read. There is nothing to photograph and nothing to reproduce. The customer-facing difference is that a swapped QR is undetectable, while a swapped tag either fails its signature check or names a merchant the customer can see is wrong.
What happens if the same tap is replayed?
It is rejected. The server keeps a high-water mark of the counter for every tag and advances it with a single atomic database operation, so of two simultaneous taps carrying the same counter exactly one can win. The second is refused as a replay rather than opening a second payment.
Status
Where this is,plainly
Whether it is live, whether it is licensed, and who holds the money. Two of these three have uncomfortable answers.
Is Tap2MoMo live?
Not yet. It is a working system in pilot preparation for Ghana in 2026, not a service you can sign up for and start taking money on today. A merchant joining now is joining a pilot, with the involvement and the uncertainty that implies. We would rather say this plainly than have a merchant discover it after signing something.
Is Tap2MoMo licensed by the Bank of Ghana?
No, and we will not imply otherwise. Operating as a payment service provider in Ghana requires authorisation under the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987), and the licensing route for the pilot is an open question we are working through rather than one we have settled. Any merchant conversation includes this.
Who holds the money?
To supply[PLACEHOLDER: settlement and payout arrangement is not finalised. This is the most important question a merchant will ask and it must be answered accurately here, in writing, before the site goes live. See docs/02-frd.md finding F1.]
Not answered here
Ask us the onethat is missing.
If the question you came with is not on this page, it is worth asking directly. The ones we cannot answer yet we will say we cannot answer yet, which is the same thing the two empty boxes above are doing.