By Omodele Adigun

As electronic payments continue to boom in the country, the reverse is the case for e-fraud as successful cases tumbled from N652.8 million recorded in the third quarter of 2015 to N406 million during the same period this year, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said. This represents about 37.8 per cent drop when compared against the record of 2015.
According to its Deputy Governor in charge of Operations, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, the reduction was made possible by the proactive efforts of the Nigeria electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) which fashioned out strategies to combat the e-payment threats.
Adelabu, who stated this Thursday in Lagos during NeFF’s end of the year dinner in Lagos, also praised the Forum for reducing ATM fraud to zero.
He, however, challenged the Forum to look at relevant initiatives that will move the industry forward in 2018 by curbing fraud incidents in the industry.
The CBN deputy governor noted that since the Forum was created in 2011, Nigeria’s Payments System environment has evolved tremendously. “At its creation, we were emerging from an era of magnetic stripe challenges which was effectively truncated with our migration to PIN and Chip technology for our card issuance.
This ensured that we reduced ATM fraud to zero with the aid of this technology. Since this feat, the industry has consistently been inundated with other types of fraud, from Card Not Present fraud, to Insider Abuses and Phishing scams. In all these, the Forum has responded not only proactively but also effectively in fashioning strategies to combat these threats to our Payments System.
“The activities of the Forum in the year has set the tone for many positive developments in the Payments Industry, a case in note is the Stakeholders Workshop on Cybercrime held in May, 2017.”
The workshop has led to collaborations across various industry stakeholders, especially the Office of the National Security Adviser, where the facility of the NgCERT was visited by the Forum. It is my sincere hope that the Forum will capitalise on these collaborations to forge partnerships that will further assist the Payments Industry in combating electronic fraud in Nigeria.

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