Opay fixes loopholes accommodating fraud

Fintech platform, OPay has disclosed that it has taken down the bank account verification feature which offered a loophole for people to create accounts using other people’s identity.

There have been reports by TechCabal that OPay and PalmPay accounts are being fraudulently opened using the identities of unsuspecting individuals.

The digital banking platform with over 40 million registered users said the identification method of securing bank accounts during the onboarding process was included because every account is backed by a BVN.

“We introduced the bank account verification to help users authenticate BVN more conveniently (for example, where a user forgets their BVN). For biometric validation, our system will verify the face of the user with that on the BVN database, or double-check with the user’s real-name.

“This is combined with an OTP process which then certifies authenticity of the user. This is more so, consistent with the CBN’s latest guidelines mandating BVN/NIN verification for Tier 1 users,” OPay said in a statement.

The company also noted that the observation from the video was therefore a result of an exploited technical glitch, which has now been addressed.