Please! Imagine this for a second:
Daavi -the gob3 (beans) seller at Makola checks her Mobile Money balance before buying fresh stock. She knows she had GHS700 yesterday. Today she sees GHS540. Confused, she asks herself, “Who took my money?” She didn’t buy airtime. She didn’t send money. She didn’t withdraw cash. Yet somehow, money has quietly disappeared.
Sound familiar? Yes, of course, it sounds familiar and you probably suffered same at a certain point.
Truth is, across Ghana, many people have experienced mysterious deductions from their bank accounts or Mobile Money wallets. Sometimes it’s a subscription they forgot about. Sometimes it’s a service they believed they had cancelled months ago. Other times, they may have unknowingly signed up for a recurring service without fully understanding what they were agreeing to.
For many people, these deductions are “small”-GHS2 today, GHS5 tomorrow, GHS10 next week. But to a Daavi, a Hajia, a pensioner, a university student, a taxi driver, or the woman selling vegetables by the roadside, or even the professor or the rich man, those small amounts add up. In today’s economy, every cedi matters.
The problem is simple, we find: starting a subscription is often much easier than ending one.
Consumers should never feel trapped in a service they no longer want. The power to spend your money should always remain in your own hands not in a complicated process or hidden menu.
At Yellow, we believe it is time to fix this once and for all.
We are calling for the introduction of a National Subscription Kill Code-one simple code that works across every mobile network, every Mobile Money platform, every bank and every company that offers recurring subscriptions.
Imagine dialling a single short code such as *1844# (just for illustration) and instantly seeing every active subscription linked to your phone number or account. All the insurance subscriptions, entertainment services, savings plans, digital content, promotional packages etc. right there on your screen. And then from the same menu, you should be able to cancel any subscription with one confirmation if you no longer want it. IMAGINE THE RELIEF!
No long phone calls. No chasing customer service. No endless forms. No frustration. Just one code. One choice. One decision-made PROUDLY AND CONVENIENTLY by the person whose money is being deducted.
Look, companies with excellent services have nothing to fear from this proposal. In fact, they stand to gain. Customers who choose to stay become more confident because they know they are there by choice, not because cancelling is difficult. Trust grows, and trusted businesses always win in the long run.
Digital payments are transforming Ghana, and that is something we should celebrate. But innovation must always go hand in hand with consumer protection. The easier it becomes to subscribe, the easier it must be to unsubscribe.
After all, it is your money and you alone should decide where it goes.
At Yellow, we believe one simple rule should guide every recurring payment in Ghana:
The customer must always have the final authority to say, “Enough. Stop my subscription.”
Because consumer freedom is not a privilege. It is a right.
By: D. K Aggor