The payment system globally has become largely digitalised with channels such as Mobile Apps, e-wallets, POS, ATMs gradually becoming the preferred ways of making different forms of payment from school bills, airtime recharges, money transfers, utility bills and cable TV payments.
As laudable as the impact of digitalised platforms on the payment system, it has been observed that all these have also come with security threats.
Herbert Wigwe, group managing director, Access Bank, while briefing stakeholders in the banking and security space at an anti-fraud workshop organised by Access Bank in commemoration of the anti-fraud week, said the issue of security threats cannot be overemphasised.
His words: “It may interest you that the bank is just “one actor” in the chain of actors involved in digital payments. Others such as developers, vendors, payment providers, aggregators, merchants, regulators, auditors, credit bureau amongst others play critical roles in data protection and security of digital payments.
“The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) reported that in 2018, about 89 per cent of all financial services fraud in Nigeria happened through Digital channels while only 11 per cent were non-electronic”.
He added that, “the total value of attempted fraud increased by over 124 per cent between 2017 and 2018”.
In Nigeria, customers are culturally not attuned to security issues around digital transactions, even well-educated people run the risk of falling victim to social engineering and identity theft traps,”
However, Wigwe is of the opinion that the failure of creating customers on digital payment channels which are useful but not needed by the customer due to lack of customer profiling is a major security threat to Digital payments in Nigeria.
“Selling of digital products should be done according to needs. Evolving payment technologies like Blockchain and cryptocurrency, should also be well regulated and come under the radar of security checks by regulators.
“We need to be innovative and keep up with the speed of digitization, whilst continuing to build secure and resilient systems which would consequently fortify the Nigerian payments ecosystem.
“This will not only help to protect digital payments in Nigeria but comprehensively achieve the cashless vision the country has aimed for in collaboration with the government, he added.
Mr. Sam Okojere, director, Payments System Management Department, said the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has been embedding fraud risk mitigating measures in its guidelines and periodic circulars to ensure that adequate measures are being implemented at all levels of digital product development and its operations.
“The Circular for Implementation of Two Factor Authentication for Internal Banking Processes of 2015 mandated banks to institute maker-checker controls and implement Two Factor Authentication at login points for applications driving Transfers, Withdrawal, Deposit, Standing Order, Account Maintenance and their System Maintenance processes.
“In addition, the circular also mandated all payment processing Gateways and Third Party Processors to implement Fraud-Monitoring Tools to check transfers from an account to multiple bank accounts. All these directives were mitigation steps responding to early indicators of risk in the industry.”
Source: Commweek
