Four Ghanaian banks will open an account for you from abroad. They disagree on who qualifies, where you must be, and what paper you need.

Somebody in London who wants a bank account in Ghana has a short list of questions. Will they take me? Do I have to fly there? What do I need to send?

Four Ghanaian banks answer all three in public, and they give four different answers. What one will accept by email, another wants certified by a lawyer.

Who counts as diaspora

Start with the question that decides whether the rest matters.

Zenith are the narrowest and the clearest. The applicant must be a Ghanaian resident abroad, and 18 or over. That is the whole of it.

GCB are the widest by a long way. Their Link2Home account is open to Ghanaians resident abroad; to Ghanaians by birth who have since acquired another country's citizenship; to persons born to at least one Ghanaian parent; and to a foreigner married to a Ghanaian, on a joint account.

That third category is the one to notice. A woman born in Croydon to a Ghanaian mother, who has never held a Ghanaian passport and may never have been to Ghana, qualifies at GCB. She does not, on the published terms, qualify at Zenith.

Absa and Fidelity both say "Ghanaians living abroad" and leave it there. Which is not a complaint — most applicants know whether that describes them — but it does mean the second-generation question has no published answer at either.

Where you have to be standing

Here the ordering reverses.

Zenith state that the account may be opened and operated from anywhere in the world. Fidelity describe theirs as a way to bank securely from anywhere in the world.

GCB, the bank with the most generous view of who counts, publish three conditions that point the other way. The account is opened with an initial deposit — and the page adds, in brackets, "(when in Ghana)". Savings account holders must be present at the branch to make over-the-counter withdrawals. And a newly opened diasporan account must be funded within 14 days.

Absa do not address it. They have an online application, a "resume an application" button, and a team of dedicated diaspora consultants. None of that is a statement that the process can be completed without travelling, and we do not read it as one.

So the bank that will take your mother's nationality appears to want you in a branch, and the bank that wants your own passport will deal with you by email.

What paper you need

Three of the four require a document that has to be obtained where the applicant lives, at the applicant's expense. None of them says what it costs, which is fair enough — it is not their charge.

Absa require certification of documents by a lawyer, a notary public, or a court of competent jurisdiction. It is mandatory for Ghanaians living abroad, on every account type, and the person certifying must be known and capable of being contacted.

Fidelity require a Power of Attorney where a mortgage applicant is non-resident. Their account opening form also specifies identification as "ONLY Valid National I.D", which is narrower than the passport-or-card the others accept.

EDC Stockbrokers, who are not a bank but sit on the same page of this site, require copies notarised by a foreign authority.

Zenith require a downloaded form, one passport photograph, and a copy of a Ghana Card or valid international Ghanaian passport — emailed to their diaspora customer service address. No notary, no certification, no lawyer.

That last one is what makes the others a finding rather than a complaint. The paperwork is not a regulatory floor that every bank must meet. One of them does without it.

What it costs to open

Absa require no minimum balance on the current account, and charge GHS 21.50 a month.

Fidelity require 100 — in cedis, dollars, pounds or euros, with no requirement to open a cedi account first — charge no monthly maintenance fee on any currency, and pay 2% a year on the cedi balance.

Zenith require GHS 500 to open and GHS 200 maintained. Their foreign currency accounts sit behind a cedi account, which must be opened first.

GCB publish that the account is operated with a minimum balance, without saying what it is.

On the published terms Fidelity is the cheapest way in and the only one paying anything. But a notary in the United Kingdom charges more per document than Zenith's entire opening balance — so for somebody who would have to pay for certification, Absa's account with no minimum may cost the most to open.

The thing none of them can tell you

Every one of these terms is published. None of the four banks is hiding anything, and none of them is wrong.

But a bank can only tell you its own terms. It cannot tell you that the competitor down the road will take your documents by email while it wants them certified by a lawyer, or that the one with no minimum balance may cost more to open than the one asking for GHS 500.

That comparison has to be made by somebody outside all four, and until it is, a Ghanaian abroad chooses on whichever site they happened to land on.

One more thing, which may matter more than all of it

Ghana's National Identification Authority states that the Ghana Card is mandatory for transactions requiring an applicant to establish their identity, and names banking among the services it covers.

All four banks currently accept a passport instead. Ghanaians abroad can now register for the card at Ghana Missions. Whether the passport remains acceptable indefinitely is a question worth putting to whichever bank you approach, rather than discovering the answer later.

One thing this piece does not cover. First National Bank publish four home loan products, each available to resident and non-resident Ghanaians in cedis, dollars or pounds, over up to twenty years. That is lending rather than an account to hold money in, so it sits outside the comparison above — but for somebody abroad buying property in Ghana it may matter more than any of it.

Every figure here is from the bank's own published material, read in September 2026. Where a bank publishes nothing on a question, we say so rather than filling the gap. If any of these terms have changed, tell us and we will correct it the same day.