MoMo payment prompt not showing in Ghana: how to approve the deposit anyway

A prompt is pushed to your line in the moment the bookmaker's system asks for the money. If the phone is on a call, parked on a second SIM, in a poor signal spot, or the push expires before you look, nothing appears. MTN changed the design in 2018 for a security reason. The Ghanaian payments company Hubtel explained at the time that customers would no longer get a prompt to type a PIN. Instead they would approve each debit themselves, so that any payment request from a vendor or third party had to be approved on purpose. The approvals list is what remains of that change, and it is where a missing prompt is found.

MTN's help centre lists My Wallet as option 6 on *170#. Inside it sits the entry for approvals, which holds payment requests waiting for a yes or a no. Hubtel's guide from the 2018 rollout describes the flow. Open My Wallet, open My Approvals, and enter your PIN to see the pending list. Select the transaction and choose YES to approve or NO to reject; MTN then sends a confirmation SMS. The option numbers inside the wallet have moved more than once since 2018, so read the labels on your screen rather than pressing a remembered digit.

Read the amount and the merchant name on the pending item before you approve. A GH₵50 deposit you started a minute ago is fine. A GH₵300 request from a name you do not know is a debit someone else is trying to push through your wallet. Reject it, then report it under My Wallet, option 4, Report Fraud.

1. Dial *170# and enter 6 for My Wallet.
2. Enter 5 for Statements, then 3 for Check Transaction Status.
3. Enter your MoMo PIN, then 1 for Sender.
4. Enter the receiver's number and the date of the transaction.
5. MTN sends an SMS confirming the status of that transaction.

If the SMS says the payment was successful, the bookmaker has your GH₵50 even while its cashier still says pending; send support the transaction ID and let them credit it. If it shows failed or nothing at all, start a fresh deposit and watch the wallet menu for the new request.

Telecel's own FAQ for online bill payment describes the same pattern. You enter the amount and your Telecel Cash number, and a prompt is sent to that number for approval. Once you approve, the payment is processed and a confirmation message from Telecel Cash reaches your phone. Its advice when a payment fails is to try the process again and, if the problem persists, contact support. Telecel's helplines are 100 from a Telecel line, 050 555 5111 from other networks and WhatsApp on 050 100 0300. AT has not published an approval or pending-list procedure for AT Money on *110#, so a missing AT prompt means retry once and then call AT customer care.

If two attempts produce no prompt and no pending item, the fault is usually between the bookmaker and the network, not on your phone. Open the cashier's transaction history, note the time and amount of each attempt, and send that to the operator's support with your MoMo number. A licensed brand from the list of betting sites in Ghana keeps those records and can push the credit manually once the network confirms the debit. The mobile money betting sites hub shows which operators run deposits through a prompt on your phone and which use a merchant payment you start yourself from the wallet.

One more habit, which the Chamber of Telecommunications repeated at its outreach in Mankessim in September 2026: verify a transaction before you approve it. A prompt is only ever a request to take money out of your wallet. The deposit you asked for deserves a yes; anything else deserves a no and a report.

• MTN Ghana Help Center: How do I check the status of a transaction I just initiated?
• MTN Ghana Help Center: How do I report Mobile Money (MoMo) fraud?
• Hubtel, 13 June 2018: How the new MTN payment approval works
• Telecel Ghana: Ghana Water Bill Payment Service FAQs
• Telecel Ghana: Contact us
• Ghana News Agency, 22 September 2026: Chamber of Telecommunications urges customers to guard MoMo PINs