June 14, 2023

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC has met with  representatives of telecommunications and financial technology companies (fintechs) in its bid to check the increasing incidence of fraudulent withdrawals and use of pre-registered SIM cards to open wallet accounts.

Its Spokesperson, Wilsom Uwujaren, said in a statement in Abuja, that the meeting was held in Kano on Tuesday.

Uwujaren said that the commission urged the operators to put in place measures to detect and report suspicious transactions to law enforcement agencies.

He reported the Zonal Commander, Farouq Dogondaji, as stressing that the impetus for the engagement was the commission’s concern about increase in a pattern of fraudulent activities.

Dogondaji said that the pattern clearly showed that fraudsters were gravitating towards Fintechs because of some observed vulnerabilities.

The Head of Cyber Crime Section of the Kano Command, Musa Olalekan, disclosed that 90 per cent of the cases received by the command bordered on fraudulent withdrawals, and were mostly traced to wallet accounts of fraudsters.

Olalekan noted that because of the higher level of compliance with regulations by Deposit Money Banks, fraudsters preferred to use the fintechs due to their poor KYC process.

He further disclosed that most of the fraudsters used pre- registered SIM cards to perpetrate their fraudulent activities which made it difficult to unmask them during investigation.

The commission urged 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 exploited to perpetrate financial crimes to include identity theft, phishing and hacking.

They, however, expressed 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 some financial technology companies: Opay Digital Services, Palmpay, Flutterwave and Kuda Microfinance.