Anti-fraud efforts: EFCC meets Fintechs in Kano
As part of efforts to check the increasing incidence of fraudulent withdrawals and use of pre-registered SIM cards to open wallet accounts, the Kano Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) yesterday June 13, 2023, met with representatives of telecommunications and financial technology companies, fintechs, in the Zone.
In his opening remarks, the Zonal Commander, Farouq Dogondaji, said the impetus for the engagement was the Commission’s concern about a pattern of fraudulent activities which clearly shows that fraudsters were gravitating towards Fintechs because of some observed vulnerabilities.
The Head of Cyber Crime Section of the Kano Command, Musa Bashir Olalekan disclosed that 90 per cent of the cases received by the Command bordered on fraudulent withdrawals which is mostly traced to wallet accounts of fraudsters.
He noted that because of the higher level of compliance with regulations by Deposit Money Banks, fraudsters prefer to use the fintechs due to their poor KYC process.
Olalekan further disclosed that most of the fraudsters used pre- registered SIM cards to perpetrate their fraudulent activities which makes it difficult to unmask them during investigation.
The Commission tasked the operators to put in place measures to detect and report suspicious transactions to law enforcement agencies.
The representatives of the telecommunication companies and financial technology companies also shared their experiences and challenges in their line of work. They highlighted some of the vulnerabilities and loopholes in their systems that cybercriminals exploit to perpetrate financial crimes to include identity theft, phishing, and hacking, among others.
They however expressed their willingness to collaborate with the EFCC and other stakeholders to eliminate these vulnerabilities and combat financial crimes.
Stakeholders represented at the parley were representatives of the major telecommunication companies (MTN, Airtel and 9mobile) and the following financial technology companies: Opay Digital Services, Palmpay, Flutterwave and Kuda Microfinance.
