According to a report from the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum, the banking sector in Nigeria lost over N9.5 billion to electronic fraud between 2019 and Q1 2023.
Thus, in order to stop the upward trend, the forum has called for new policies and greater cooperation.
The forum, presided over by the Central Bank of Nigeria, focused on “New Strategies for Combating e-Fraud in a Cashless Environment” at its general meeting held in Lagos for the third quarter.
Speaking to the group of financial experts, Premier Oiwoh, Managing Director of Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), emphasised the troubling trend of e-fraud in the nation, particularly through betting platforms.
He was represented by Temidayo Adekanye, Chief Risk Officer of NIBBS, who stated: “Recently, we had the cashless policies from CBN, which was incurring a dramatic increase in the volume of transactions in the industry, as well as the impact of the volume of fraud in the industry itself.
“Now, the increased efficiency has also resulted in a dramatic rise in fraud across industry. The total amount of fraud reported through the industry forum portal for Q1 2023 was N5.1 billion.
“For fraud trends over the last five years, in 2019, we’re looking at about N3 billion, and as of right now in 2023, we’re looking at about N9.5 billion. Over the past five years, fraud losses have significantly increased.
“So, as you can see also from the current perspective, from January to July 2023, there has been a slight jump between June and July, a 39 percent increase with 8,649 with the actual fraud losses in July 2023, we’re looking at N1.2 billion which is a 54 percent increase over the period.”As you can see from January overall, we recorded actual fraud losses of about N2.7 billion.
He said specifically, “What we see most is that the main channels are the betting platforms. Therefore, the money is a black hole once it enters the betting platform, a wallet account, or in some cases, POS agents after it is cashed out.You cannot get that money back in any way. We could see industrywide recovery rates of 5%. Therefore, it is up to us all to identify those gambling and wallet accounts, POS agents, cryptocurrency accounts, and occasionally purchases.
Speaking on efforts to achieve zero fraud in the industry, Musa Jimoh, NeFF Chairman and Director of Payment Systems Management at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said: “Today, we are here to continue that conversation and look at new strategies by which we can combat E-fraud.
