Source: newsthemegh.com
A dramatic 117% increase from GH12 million the previous year, money fraudsters were successful in stealing GH26 million from Ghanaians in 2022.
According to the Bank of Ghana’s Banks, Special Deposit-taking Institutions and Payment Service Providers Fraud Report, the majority of victims were elderly, illiterate mobile money users who were not very familiar with the program.
This is taking place as telcos and banks, in particular, are educating the public on how to avoid falling victim to online fraudsters’ tricks. It is also taking place as Ghana begins to register SIM cards, mostly to stop mobile money fraud and other types of online fraud.
The entire loss value of fraud recorded by PSPs for 2022, according to the report, was GHS27 million, but since the industry was able to recover some of the money, the actual loss was only GHS26 million.
PSP fraud is all mobile money-related fraud that has been reported to payment service providers by mobile money operators (also known as EMIs, or electronic money issuers).
The total number of fraud occurrences throughout the period was 15,164, of which 80% had to do with mobile money. The remaining 2,998 cases, or 20% of the entire fraud count, were tied to banks and SDIs.
Transfers made to the incorrect recipient and cash reversals were the two main types of mobile money fraud that PSPs reported. Wrong transfers occur when a victim unintentionally transfers funds intended for a specific recipient to the incorrect mobile money wallet.
Before the PSP may cancel the transaction, the beneficiary cashes out the funds right away.
The biggest mobile money provider, MTN MobileMoney Limited, has not enabled self reversal, so customers would always have to go through a time-consuming, laborious process to get their money reversed, giving fraudsters plenty of time to cash out the money. This is one of the reasons fraudsters are able to get away with this type of fraud.
Self-reversal is now permitted by Vodafone, AirtelTigo, and MTN, which told Techfocus24 that they are trying to make it possible soon as part of their mission to give customers greater power.
The development of a self-service option for customer improper transfer reversals is ongoing at MobileMoney Limited. Given the volume of transactions on our platform and other potential hazards, great caution must be exercised. Updates will be provided when appropriate, and more developments are anticipated, it stated.
Cash reversal happens when a fraudster calls a victim to demand that they reverse a transaction after sending the victim’s phone a fake mobile money credit notification.
The fraudsters then persuade the victims that money has been accidentally credited to their accounts, and they want a refund.
Some victims immediately send the amount specified in the phony credit messages without first checking the balances in their mobile money wallets, only to discover later that no money was ever truly awarded to them.
All of these fraudulent activities were carried out through mobile numbers that were either incompletely registered or fraudulently connected to the Ghana Cards of defenseless individuals without their knowledge.
However, the National Communications Authority (NCA) disconnected over 9 million erroneous SIM cards on June 1, 2023, after disconnecting approximately 6.1 million a month earlier. Approximately 280,000 mobile money merchant SIM cards are among them. In fact, mobile money merchants have committed mobile money fraud themselves.
However, there has been a noticeable decrease in the activities of mobile money fraudsters in terms of how frequently they approach potential victims since the disconnection of 9 million bad SIMs. In order to guarantee that the 2023 fraud report accurately displays a considerable decrease in mobile money fraud, it is anticipated that the NCA, telecoms, and security services will perform a clean up to ensure that the system is free of any bad SIMs.
According to the BoG research, there would be 5 billion e-money transactions in 2022, with a value of almost GHS1 trillion. In comparison to the GH978.32 billion value and 4.25 billion volumes in 2021, this represents a slight rise.
It was highlighted that the use of e-money among Ghanaians is increasing, necessitating the development by stakeholders of suitable fraud mitigation tools to help combat fraud, notably public education and the deployment of tactics that can help the most vulnerable people understand the message.
BoG also noted that the majority of users of the mobile money application paid little attention to security, and that this widespread lack of security awareness has greatly contributed to consumers falling prey to fraudsters.
According to the Central Bank, it has consequently asked the financial institutions to implement strict steps to lessen the effects of this fraudulent behavior.