The two cedi rates

This page explains that week. Its rates and fees are from August 2026 and we have not updated them. If you are sending today, start with the Ghana guide and check the app before you send.

There are two cedi numbers in circulation, 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 had drifted from 11.70 on Monday 3 August to 11.77 a week later, so the cedi weakened a little.

The second is the forex-market rate, sometimes called the forex-bureau rate. That is what forex bureaus quote 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. This rate was weaker than the BoG rate, and it moved in the same direction.

The gap between the two on 10 August, in numbers your family will recognise, was about 68 pesewas on the dollar. In percentage terms, the forex-bureau rate gave about 5.8 percent more cedi per dollar than the BoG interbank rate.

Which rate the app uses

On 11 August the apps we could see matched neither rate exactly. Their prices sat close to the BoG rate.

You can see this on the app's own currency page. Wise showed £1 at about 15.89 cedi on the morning of Tuesday 11 August 2026. BoG's rate for the pound that day was about 15.86. Some apps quote the rate straight and add a visible fee. Some hide a small markup inside the rate.

Prices this close to the BoG rate are what you would expect if the apps buy their cedis in the market banks use with each other. That is our reading of the prices. No app says where it buys.

Nigeria also has a street rate and an app rate, and the gap between them changes. In Ghana that week the forex-market rate was the weaker one, and the app rate was closer to the central bank's stronger number. So a dollar was worth more cedi at the 12.45 rate than at the app's rate. But 12.45 is what a customer pays a bureau to buy dollars. A bureau pays less than that when it buys dollars from you. Ask for its buying rate before you compare quotes with a cousin who cashed dollars in Accra.

What £300 cleared on 11 August

On £300, the three apps below came within about 80 cedi of each other. So compare the amount each app says will arrive, and send with the one that shows the most.

On the morning of Tuesday 11 August 2026:

Wise delivered GHS 4,697.49 (about £296 worth at that rate) on £300. The visible fee was £4.41. The rate was 15.89, sampled by Wise's own feed at 04:11 UK time.
Instarem delivered 4,733.98 cedi on £300. There was no visible fee. The rate was 15.78, sampled at 03:23 UK time.
Remitly quoted an everyday rate of 15.51 to 15.74 on 11 August for sending pounds to Ghana, with no fee. That range was for different send amounts. On £300 those rates work out to between 4,653 and 4,722 cedi. Remitly also ran a first-transfer offer of £10 off any send of £50 or more, which put the first-time sender ahead by about 158 cedi at that rate.

All three paid close to the BoG rate. The 12.45 rate was for dollars, and it was the price a bureau sells at. If you changed pounds at a bureau, Modern Ghana, using CediRates, reported an average buying rate of 15.62 on 11 August. On £300 that is about GHS 4,686. That is one day's average, so it does not show that an app always pays more.

Lemfi, Sendwave and WorldRemit did not have a fresh price in the comparison feed that morning for sending pounds to Ghana. That is a gap in what we can see, not a comment on those apps. Sendwave and WorldRemit name MTN Mobile Money on their own pages. Lemfi's Ghana page does not. Check the wallet and the live rate in the app before you send.

Where the money arrives

Wise, Remitly, Sendwave and WorldRemit name MTN Mobile Money on their own pages. Lemfi's Ghana page names AirtelTigo, Vodafone and "other mobile money services", not MTN, so check the app before you choose it for an MTN wallet. Telecel Cash and AT Money (the former AirtelTigo Money) are two other wallets, and not every app pays into them, so check inside the app before you send. Wise caps a wallet payout at around GHS 2,800 per transfer, so £300 on Wise needs a bank account or two smaller sends. Instarem's Ghana page asks for bank details. Bank account pay-out is also available. If you have a choice, a mobile wallet is usually faster.

If your recipient's MoMo wallet is a merchant account or is not fully verified with the network, some apps will stop the send. This is not a UK-side problem; it is a Ghana-side registration rule. WorldRemit says it cannot send to an MTN business wallet, so your recipient needs a personal wallet. MTN's limits also matter: on 4 November 2026 a Minimum wallet had a daily limit of GHS 3,000, so £300 can be too much for it. Your recipient can upgrade the limit on their phone.

Before you send

The cedi weakened a little against the dollar in the week to 10 August 2026. On 5 August the Bank of Ghana governor said BoG will continue to take decisions that protect the value of the cedi. BoG's dollar rate then went from 11.77 on Monday 10 August to 10.95 on Friday 14 August, so the cedi strengthened. One week's rate can move that far. 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.

The market rates on this page are from 3 to 14 August 2026, with each date in its line. The app prices are from Tuesday 11 August 2026, the week this page was written. The Wise sample was pulled at 04:11 UK time and the Instarem sample at 03:23 UK time on the same morning. They will have moved since, so check the app before you send.

Corrections

2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a forex bureau rate would have delivered about 4,970 cedi on £300, roughly 270 cedi more than the app. That sum used the price a bureau sells dollars at, and the average bureau buying rate for the pound on 11 August was 15.62, about GHS 4,686 on £300.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said the cedi was weakening in the week of 10 August and that the Bank of Ghana governor spoke that Monday. The cedi weakened in the week before and then strengthened, from 11.77 on 10 August to 10.95 on 14 August, and the governor spoke on 5 August.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page gave the Bank of Ghana rate for 3 August as 11.68 and called the bureau rate 5.8 percent weaker. The Bank of Ghana's table says 11.70, and 5.8 percent is how many more cedi a dollar bought.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Remitly's 15.51 to 15.74 was its range for that week and depended on the moment of the send. It was the range on 11 August, across send amounts.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said every licensed UK app has to price close to the Bank of Ghana rate, that apps buy cedis in the market banks use and cannot buy at the bureau rate, and that no licensed UK app gives the bureau rate. We have no source for these, so the page now says what the prices showed on 11 August, as our reading.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said the bureau gap was what the news meant by the cedi going from Africa's strongest currency to one of its weakest, and that 12.45 came from licensed bureaus in Accra and Kumasi. We have no source for either, so both are gone.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a wallet problem can be fixed in a day at any MoMo agent with an ID card. We have no source for that: WorldRemit does not send to MTN business wallets, and MTN lets people upgrade a limit on their phone.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a mobile money wallet is where most family transfers arrive now. We found no primary source that counts transfers into Ghana by how they arrive, so the line has been removed.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said every app here pays into a Ghanaian wallet, that Lemfi pays into MTN, and that MTN and AT Money are the two main networks. The page now names MTN for four apps, says Lemfi's own page does not name MTN, says Instarem asks for bank details, and adds the Wise wallet cap, MTN's daily limit and Telecel Cash.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said bank pay-out usually costs the app more and that a wallet is usually cheaper. We have no source for either, so both are gone. It also said street changers in Nigeria quote more naira than the app. That is not always true, so that line is gone too.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said the app sends more cedi per pound than a bureau, and that Ghana's gap is the opposite of Nigeria's. One day's average does not show the first, and the second was wrong: 12.45 gives more cedi per dollar than the app rate, but it is the price a bureau sells dollars at.
2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said the cedi would very likely be weaker next week. That August forecast is gone, and the rates and fees now carry their August dates.

The two cedi rates - which one your family actually gets