The government has called on telecoms sector stakeholders to collaborate to enable them stamp out the rising mobile money fraud which threatens financial inclusion in the country.
According to the government, all the stakeholders including the mobile money operators, National Communications Authority (NCA), the government itself, and the security agencies must work hand-in-hand to sanitize the mobile money ecosystem in the West African second largest economy.
The Minister for Communications, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful who made the call in an interview , warned: “Until, we have officers in place to help with the education, we still be lagging behind the criminals”.
“Important that we learn to work together, telcos need to report these incidents. So that the National Cyber security centre will know the kinds of incidence that are occurring to develop appropriate solutions to address those incidence”.
She added: “If they keep these fraudulent incidences to themselves, without sharing, we cannot work together with the security agencies and the Ministry of Communications to develop adequate response mechanisms and even preempt the ways they would defraud us in the future”.
Calling for greater collaborations between all users of cyber space within the cyber security architecture that we are putting in place, which is drawn out of our cyber security policy and strategy to ensure that we can all navigate cyber space safely and securely, according to Mrs Owusu-Ekuful.
“In the coming days, we will be rolling out a more coordinated strategy of public education and sensitization so that people will know the kind of dangers out there and how to protect ourselves”.
Call for collaboration timely
Mobile money industry watchers described the government’s collaboration call as timely. According to them, the four mobile money operators-MTN Mobile Money, TigoCash, Airtel Money and Vodafone Cash are fighting the crime separately with police’s collaboration.
The Head of Research & Communications at the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Derek Laryea who earlier blamed the geometric rate of mobile money fraud in the country on customers’ greed and ignorance said: “We will soon embark on intensive education campaigns on mobile money fraud to complement what the individual telecom companies are doing”.
He added: “Mobile money operators are beginning to intensify mobile money fraud education for customers, merchants/agents, police, the judiciary, media, among others”.
For customers, the education campaign would seek to reduce ignorance and deepen their understanding on the activities of the fraudsters, Mr Laryea noted.
The purpose of the education programme for the police is to provide them with the right skills to solve mobile money fraud and other related issues.
Furthermore, the merchants/agents’ education programme would the merchants/agents to be vigilant while conducting their day-to-day activities at their various merchant shops, he added.
Besides, “we also considering the judiciary in the education programmes to provide them with the understanding for better adjudication of the mobile money fraud”.
Fraud campaigns developed
Touch on what MTN Mobile Money is doing to address the fraudulent activities of fraudsters, Manager, Mobile Finance Services Analytics, Budget & Reporting at MTN Mobile Money, Solomon Hayford said: “Fraud campaigns have been developed for customer awareness and education”.
He was quick to add that his outfit holds continuous quarterly engagements with agents to educate them on prevailing schemes, fraud engagement and capacity building workshop organized for security (police) and media personnel to enhance their knowledge in the space, and continuous media engagements to create needed sensitization”.
Protect your PIN codes
Consumers have a responsibility to protect their pin codes and to be vigilant at all times. Fraudsters will always attempt to defraud customers, but without compromising customer Personal Identification Number (PIN) codes, the fraudsters cannot be a threat to any user, Mr Hayford admonished.
At a workshop organised by MTN Ghana in collaboration with the Journalists for Business Advocacy ( JBA) in Accra, Albert Antwi-Boasiako, principal consultant at the e-Crime Bureau, the leading digital forensics, fraud investigations & cyber security firm with a dedicated e-Crime Lab operating in Ghana and other African countries, also advised Ghanaians that they should never send mobile money to a third party that they do not know personally.
Mobile Money involves direct cash inflows and outflows between external entities such as subscribers, merchants, banks or retailers. Transaction data flow through multiple parties and tracking usage could be quite a daunting task.
Evolution of mobile money
Developing economies including Ghana are relatively under banked but have in the last few years achieved very high mobile penetration rates.
In Ghana, banking started about a century ago, but only about 40 percent of Ghanaians have bank accounts, meaning majority of the population are unbanked. This unbanked population therefore use cash for transactions, excluding them from the formal financial system, i.e. access to savings, bank credit, mortgages, investment and other financial products.
In the last five years, however, mobile money has seen an astronomical growth, drawing thousands of the unbanked households into the financial inclusion net.
According to Bank of Ghana (BoG) data, as at 2012, the total value of mobile money transactions totaled GHS594.12 million. Significantly, as at December last year the value of transactions had reached GHS78.5 billion, indicating that within five years, mobile money transactions has grown by more than 13,000 percent. This is huge and promises a better future.
It is important to note that the mobile money service has transformed lives positively in Ghana and as such, all stakeholders must assist in creating the needed awareness and providing support in protecting the service.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report