Digital payment security is significant consideration for anyone looking to conduct any transaction through a digital platform. Hence, it is important for digital payment providers to give their customers the assurance that their funds and personal information are safe.
This is against the background that digital money transactions, in recent times, have gained popularity partly because it allows instantaneous and borderless transfer of funds for players in the formal and informal sectors,
Figures from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) show that the nation’s mobile money market had a total of 8.5 million customers as at December 2018. More recently, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that a total of 557,083,712 electronic-payment transactions valued at N34.02 trillion were recorded in selected banks across the country during the first quarter of the year.
While these figures are impressive showing the growth of the digital and online payment industry, a number of Nigerians are still very sceptical when it comes to using digital payment platforms. According to a 2018 Africa CyberSecurity report Financial services companies, government institutions, telecommunication firms and financial technology companies operating in Nigeria, among others, lost about $800 million to cybercrime. Some online-users have been reluctant to embark on digital transactions without being familiar with the digital payments provider and confident in their security procedures due to the popularity of cybercrime and fraud.
In ensuring safety for customers while transacting via digital and online payment platforms, providers should take into consideration a number of procedures including ensuring that all connections through their platforms are secured and encrypted. According to Pardon Mujakachi, Head of Sub-Saharan Africa at WorldReit, it is important that information exchanged between systems are not accessible to any third party, deploy security checks for debit/credit cards to various payment service providers and have a compliance team that regularly monitors transactions to identify signs and deal with suspicious activities.
Customers need to look out for red flags that indicate that they are not transacting on an insecure platform. Some of these red flags to look out for include a platform that is not fully licensed or regulated by the relevant regulatory body in the country of operation, a platform that does not have a dedicated customer service team that can quickly attend to any security breaches or other issues when experienced or a provider that asks you to provide your account details over the phone.