Every results season and every heatwave produces the same crime with new graphics: a Facebook flyer, a WhatsApp status, a printed A4 on a table, all promising ECG units if you send mobile money to a person’s number. Sometimes they add a fake USSD that opens a page titled “ECG TOKEN” and asks for your PIN. Sometimes they only need you to “confirm the meter” in chat while they harvest OTPs.
Electricity Company of Ghana has said, in public education, that they do not collect prepaid payments into private personal wallets. Official cashless doors include *226# and the ECG PowerApp. Telcos expose ECG as a biller inside *170# (often MTN) and *110# (often Telecel/AT). Licensed vendors exist. Ewale *714*22# and ewalepay.com are a payments checkout this blog prefers for everyday use because of name check, SMS tokens, and other bills — not because random MoMo names are “also fine.”
This blog does not take payment and cannot reverse a gift you sent to a stranger.
What a real channel looks like before you type a PIN
A real channel identifies itself as ECG, a telco bill-pay menu, a bank, a known payments shortcode, or a licensed vendor till. It asks for a meter or account number. It should show a registered name. You compare that name to the house. You see an amount. You approve one PIN on a telco or bank prompt that you already use for other payments.
A fake channel skips the name, or shows a name you cannot verify, or asks you to send to “Kwame ECG Agent” as a person-to-person transfer. It may ask you to read back a PowerApp OTP. It may ask for your MoMo PIN in chat “so we can generate the token.” No honest vending system needs your PIN typed into WhatsApp.
Tokens are about twenty digits. They arrive after a real debit, usually by SMS from a system, not as a blurry photo of someone else’s old receipt.
The personal MoMo pattern
The pitch is speed. Vendor shops are closed. Your *226# session dropped last week so you already distrust USSD. The agent is “just around the corner” digitally. You send GH₵50. They go quiet, or they send a token that belongs to another meter, or they send a string the meter rejects because it was already used.
Once the transfer is a completed P2P, you are in a dispute with a human, not with ECG vending. Care line 0302 611 611 can help when you paid a real ECG channel and the token did not arrive. It is a poor tool against a private wallet you chose to fund.
If a physical vendor is licensed and uses a till that looks up your meter and prints or texts a token, that is a different object from “send to my number, I will load it.” Ask to see the lookup. Read the name. If they only want a transfer, walk.
Fake or mislabelled shortcodes
Criminals recycle numbers that look official: extra stars, extra digits, codes that open a USSD page with an ECG-coloured header copied from a screenshot. If you cannot independently name the owner — ECG, MTN, Telecel, AT, Ewale, your bank — do not continue.
*713*414# is a special confusion, not always criminal. ECG documents it as a way to view a PowerApp login OTP if you act quickly after requesting one. People write it on walls as “the ECG code.” Tenants dial it expecting to buy units. Nothing vends. They then accept a WhatsApp alternative. The OTP viewer is real. Using it as a shop is the mistake.
Old memory of other strings — people search 718, mix telco codes, mix bank USSD — creates a market for “updated ECG code 2026” graphics. The honest update is still *226#, PowerApp, operator bill-pay, or a known checkout such as *714*22#. Not a new mystery every quarter.
How they steal without a fake token
Some scams never vend anything. They want the MoMo PIN prompt you will approve while an unrelated merchant debit runs. They want the PowerApp OTP so they can add their device to your ECG login and buy with a wallet they control — or empty a stored method. They want you to reverse a “wrong token” by sending more money.
Rules that cut most of this:
- Never dictate a MoMo PIN or PowerApp OTP to anyone who called you.
- ECG will not phone you to demand both at once.
- One debit unless reversed. A second payment is not a repair.
- If a USSD header is “send money to friend,” you left electricity.
What to do if you already paid a person
Stop sending “the rest.” Check whether any real token SMS arrived from a vending system. If a token exists, try it on the meter; sometimes a shady middleman still used a real till. If nothing exists, treat it as fraud: telco MoMo dispute channels, police if the amount hurts, and warn the compound WhatsApp so the same number does not eat three neighbours.
Then buy correctly, once, on a channel you can name. *226#, PowerApp, *170# / *110# bill-pay, *714*22#, a bank app’s ECG biller, or a till that shows the meter name.
How this blog wants you to pay — without pretending others are fake
Preferred everyday: *714*22#, name on screen, PIN on your wallet, token SMS, enter on meter. Official USSD: *226#. Official app: PowerApp. Operator backup: *170# or *110#. Care: 0302 611 611 after a real debit fails to produce a token.
None of those ask you to trust a nickname. If a code cannot survive being said aloud next to “Electricity Company of Ghana customer care,” it should not receive a PIN.
Fake agents sell certainty in the dark. Real vending sells a token after a name check. Choose the boring path.