This week the news says one thing and the app says another. Modern Ghana quotes the cedi at 12.45 to the dollar on the forex market on Monday 10 August 2026, and the Bank of Ghana interbank rate at 11.77. Then you open Wise or Lemfi to send 300 pounds home, and the number the app quotes matches neither exactly. Which one is real, and which one is the one that lands in your mother’s wallet.
The two cedi rates
There are two cedi numbers in circulation right now, and both are real. They just measure different trades.
The first is the Bank of Ghana interbank rate. It is the number the central bank publishes daily as the reference for what commercial banks pay each other for dollars. On Monday 10 August 2026 that number was 11.77 cedi to the dollar. It has drifted from 11.68 on Monday 3 August to 11.77 a week later. Weakening, quietly.
The second is the forex-market rate, sometimes called the forex-bureau rate. That is what the licensed change bureaus in Accra and Kumasi are quoting when a walk-in customer wants dollars for cedis. Modern Ghana’s daily fixings put it at 12.45 on Monday 10 August. A week earlier it was 12.30. Weaker still, and moving in the same direction as the BoG number.
The gap between the two, in numbers your family will recognise, is about 68 pesewas on the dollar. In percentage terms, the forex-bureau rate is about 5.8 percent weaker than the BoG interbank rate this week. That is the number the news is talking about when it says the cedi has gone from Africa’s strongest currency this year to one of its weakest.
Which rate the app uses
The rate the transfer app uses is not the forex-bureau rate. It is not exactly the BoG rate either. It is a third number, the wholesale interbank rate the app itself trades on when it moves pounds and dollars and cedis in bulk. In practice that number sits very close to the BoG interbank rate. It does not sit near the forex-bureau rate.
You can see this on the app’s own currency page. Wise shows 1 pound at about 15.89 cedi this morning, Tuesday 11 August 2026. That is the interbank number, near BoG’s, not near the forex bureau. Every licensed UK app has to price close to this. Some quote the rate straight and add a visible fee. Some hide a small markup inside the rate. Nobody hands you the forex-bureau rate on a licensed transfer.
The reason is straightforward. The apps buy their cedis wholesale, from the same interbank system BoG’s rate references. They cannot buy cedis at the forex-bureau counter. So they cannot pass that rate on to you.
This is the opposite of the Nigeria situation, where the parallel market is stronger than the central bank window and street changers hand out more naira than the app can. In Ghana this week the forex-market rate is the weaker one, and the app rate is closer to the central bank’s stronger number. So the app sends more cedi per pound than a walk-in change at the bureau would. That is worth knowing before you compare quotes with a cousin who cashed dollars in Accra last week.
What 300 pounds actually clears this week
On the morning of Tuesday 11 August 2026:
- Wise delivers GHS 4,697.49 (about £296 worth at that rate) on 300 pounds. The visible fee is £4.41. The rate is 15.89, sampled by Wise’s own feed at 04:11 UK time.
- Instarem delivers 4,733.98 cedi on 300 pounds. There is no visible fee. The rate is 15.78, sampled at 03:23 UK time.
- Remitly quotes an everyday rate in the 15.51 to 15.74 range this week for sending pounds to Ghana, with no fee. On 300 pounds that works out to somewhere between 4,653 and 4,722 cedi, depending on the exact rate at the moment of the send. Remitly also runs a first-transfer offer of £10 off any send of £50 or more, which lands the first-time sender ahead by about 158 cedi at today’s rate.
The three land within about 80 cedi of each other on 300 pounds. That is real money in Accra, but it is small next to the shape of the story. All three are firmly on the BoG side of the two cedi rates.
For reference, if the forex-bureau rate applied to the send, the family would receive around 4,970 cedi on 300 pounds. That is roughly 270 cedi more than the app actually delivered. No licensed UK app hands out that number, because none of them can buy cedis at that price.
Lemfi, Sendwave and WorldRemit did not have a fresh price in the comparison feed this morning for sending pounds to Ghana. That is a gap in what we can see, not a comment on those apps. All three run this route to MTN Mobile Money and AT Money wallets. Check their live rate in the app before you send.
Where the money lands
Every UK-side app on this list can pay into a Ghanaian mobile money wallet, which is where most family transfers arrive now. MTN Mobile Money and AT Money (the former AirtelTigo Money) are the two main networks. Bank account pay-out is also available and usually costs the app a little more per send, which is why the app fee sometimes ticks up when you choose bank instead of wallet. If you have a choice, mobile wallet is faster and usually cheaper.
If your recipient’s MoMo wallet is a merchant account or is not fully verified with the network, some apps will stop the send until the recipient upgrades. This is not a UK-side problem; it is a Ghana-side registration rule. It is fixable in a day at any MoMo agent with an ID card.
Before you send this week
The cedi is weakening against the dollar, and it will very likely be weaker against the pound next week than it is this week. The Bank of Ghana governor said publicly on Monday 10 August 2026 that BoG will act to protect the cedi. Whether that holds the rate steady, or whether the interbank number keeps drifting toward the forex-bureau number, is not something anyone can promise. If you have a large send planned, splitting it across two or three weeks is a safer bet than putting the whole thing through at one week’s rate.
Do not chase the forex-bureau number quoted in the news. That rate is real, but it is not the one your app can sell you, and it is not the one your family gets when the pounds arrive. The app rate this week is close to the BoG interbank rate. That is the number that matters for the transfer.
Rates and fees quoted here are current as of Tuesday 11 August 2026. The Wise sample was pulled at 04:11 UK time and the Instarem sample at 03:23 UK time on the same morning. If the cedi moves again, the numbers on this page move with it. The Friday number tracks the live figure week by week.