Senior Manager of MTN Business, Benedict Bentil, has said Ghana’s expanding social media audience presents significant opportunities for brands, but challenges with payment integration and trust are slowing the growth of social commerce.
Speaking at the Citi Business Festival on Wednesday, June 24, 2026, on the topic “E-commerce, social commerce and digital marketing for Ghanaian brands,” Mr. Bentil noted that millions of potential customers are already active on social media platforms and can be reached by businesses.
“Now, we see the trend of high data usage when it comes to social media,” he said. “There’s about 8 million on Facebook, more than 2 million on Instagram, and even more on TikTok.”
He explained that this presents a direct marketing opportunity for businesses that can successfully convert online engagement into sales.
“These are eyes that you can easily address with your products and services,” he said, adding that the fastest route is through e-commerce and social commerce channels.
However, he noted that fragmented payment systems remain a major barrier to seamless transactions.
“The problem is integrating it seamlessly into social commerce,” Mr. Bentil noted.
He explained that while traditional e-commerce platforms have largely streamlined payment systems, social commerce still depends on manual processes that slow down transactions.
“In social commerce, someone has to start a WhatsApp conversation, then you tell them to send MoMo, and then you have to confirm before you send,” he said. “These are things we need to work on to streamline growth.”
Mr. Bentil called for stronger collaboration between technology providers and small businesses to simplify transactions through automation and digital tools.
“We start by making tools available to businesses,” he said. “If you integrate APIs into chatbots, customers can go straight from conversation to purchase.”
He pointed to existing platforms such as WhatsApp Business channels and MTN’s mobile money merchant services as tools that can be scaled to support SMEs and micro enterprises.
Beyond payments, he identified trust as another major factor limiting the growth of online transactions.
“The trust issue is a problem we are trying to solve because it’s on both sides, supply and demand,” he said, citing cases where customers refuse cash on delivery or sellers deliver substandard products after payment.
However, he stressed that such cases are relatively rare. “If you have a hundred transactions and one goes bad, we should try and fix the trust so people lean more on social commerce,” he said.
He added that stronger trust systems, improved verification processes, and better record-keeping could make digital commerce more reliable and encourage wider adoption among buyers and sellers.
The 2026 Citi Business Festival is powered by 97.3 Citi FM and Channel One TV in partnership with Absa Bank and sponsored by MTN, Zonda Tec Ghana Limited and Petra eTrust.
