Statistics by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement have shown that 20 million NIBSS instant payment (electronic fund transfer) worth N9.9tn were transacted between January and September this year.

The data presented at the monthly meeting of the Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum in Lagos on Thursday stated that transactions executed on NIBSS-registered Point of Sale terminals as at September stood at N25.6bn compared to about N13bn in the same period in 2011.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Fidelity Bank Plc, Mr. Reginald Ihejiahi, who was represented by the bank’s Executive Director, Shared Services, Mrs Chijioke Ugochukwu, stressed the need for an effective capacity building exercise for members of the financial industry in order to aid fraud prevention in the industry.

She noted that the statistics on the electronic fund transfer revealed the level of progress made with the cash-less policy.

According to her, Fidelity Bank has tapped into the cash-less programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria as that is the major growth engine and way to enhance financial inclusion.

She added, “The increasing uptake being recorded in the electronic payment platform, of course, will present its own challenge, particularly from the standpoint of security. To operators and regulators therefore, one of the greatest challenges is how to devise and implement measures that will reduce the incidence of frauds in electronic payment transactions to the barest minimum.

One of the most effective means of achieving this objective is the creation of an effective awareness creation structure that will promote the dissemination of this information to a wide spectrum of public. The future of e-banking is very bright in the country and with the right kind of awareness exercise, the cash-less exercise would be enhanced.”

The Chief Risk Officer, Interswitch, Mr. Oshioke Ojior, said that the current trend of e-payment system required decentralisation to control fraudsters’ access to secure systems.

Also, stakeholders said with about N101bn already lost to fraudsters this year by Nigerian financial institutions, there was need to advocate for the decentralisation of authentication exercises in financial institutions in order to control illegal access to the system.

According to them, this move will form part of measures to strengthen fraud prevention efforts in the industry, especially as online transactions and other forms of cash-less initiatives continue to grow in the sector.

Source: Punch (written by Ademola Alawiye)