FirstBank Expands African Footprint with FBNBank DR Congo

First Bank of Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of FBN Holdings PLC and Nigeria’s most valuable bank brand hasunveiled FBNBank DR Congo, formerly registered as Banque Internationale de Credit (BIC).

In 2011, FirstBank acquired 75% equity interest in BIC and immediately reinforced it as one of the strongest banking institutions in the DRC.

Following the recent approval by Central Bank of Congo (BCC), the Banque Internationale de Credit has now become FBNBank DR Congo, a subsidiary of First Bank of Nigeria Limited. FBNBank DR Congo is strategically positioned to foster greater collaboration and provide better service for the country’s public and private sector clients, and the general public at large.

The launch further consolidates FirstBank’s position as the largest corporate and retail banking financial institution in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) with presence in Ghana, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal as well as presence in the UK and representatives offices in Johannesburg, Paris, Abu Dhabi and Beijing, China.

The expansion represents FirstBank’s strategic objective to maintain significant market share, expand its pan-African footprint and diversify earnings while delivering value to shareholders. 

With over 35 branches in DRC, FBNBank DR Congo leverages FBN’s international network, business expertise, which is part of the diversified synergies of the FBN Group to offer innovative, convenient and secure banking services to its customers and better seize the emerging opportunities of the market

Speaking on this development, Bisi Onasanya,  GMD/CEO of FirstBank, said: “The launch of FBNBank DR Congo fulfills one of the critical stages of our ambition to steadily broaden and build a more diverse footprint across Africa. We are committed to developing a multi-local business model that broadens our geographic revenue base while providing enhanced service delivery to our new customers and equity participation to local investors.”

Commenting further, Cheikh-Tidiane N’Diaye, Managing Director, FBNBank DR Congo said “Having built value for Nigeria over the last 120 years, FBNBank DR Congo is poised to do even more in the DR Congo financial markets.

 FBNBank DR Congo will provide customers with a bouquet of banking solutions that make their financial lives less cumbersome and stressful whilst providing a delightful service experience.

FBNBank has a history of leading the market with banking solutions that set the pace for other players in the financial landscape.

The orientation of FBNBank towards co-creation means it is constantly listening and inputting feedback received from customers in development of products and services that are relevant, N’Diaye added.

Also speaking, Folake Ani-Mumuney, Head, Marketing and Corporate Communications, enthused; “the refreshed launch of FBNBank DR Congo represents a milestone in our journey to be the largest financial services brand in Sub-Saharan Africa and since our brand is at the heart of the holistic experience we seek to deliver to our stakeholders, an essential part of retaining patronage and the competitive edge that keeps us at the coveted position of market leader.

 Launching the FBNBank DR Congo is a major milestone in a wider strategic plan to expand our African footprints and as part of the drive to ensure that the group is more efficient and effective in meeting the needs of its customers as reflected in our value proposition of placing the highest priority on the needs of our customers.” As embodied by the new pay-off line, ‘You First’.

Improper Implementation to Account for 5 Percent of Card Fraud on EMV by Year End –Report

Following some high-profile data breaches in 2014, criminals have taken advantage of poor implementations of EMV chip payment applications, committing extensive fraud that defeats EMV controls for everyone in the payment card ecosystem.

In her research note “Avoid Pitfalls with Payment Card Security Technologies and PCI,” Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, points out some of the hidden problems with payment card security technologies and the payment card industry (PCI). By year-end 2015, at least 5 percent of card issuers will suffer fraud on EMV cards due to improper implentations, up from a handful today.

In her blog post, Ms. Litan shared some of the findings from her report. Ms. Litan said: EMV chip cards, already adopted in the rest of the world, have proven to dramatically reduce counterfeit card fraud because they are significantly harder to clone than magnetic stripe (magstripe) cards, which are still used throughout the U.S.

Nevertheless, the adoption of EMV is relatively slow and as a result, payment card network participants must prepare for at least five more years of support for EMV chip as well as magstripe protocols on a single payment card.

Card data breaches have pushed U.S. banks, card networks, mega-retailers and other payment card acceptors into more aggressively adopting two further key security technologies in addition to EMV cards - tokenization and point-to-point encryption (P2PE).

Although these three security technologies have been around for years, interest in them soared after the breaches, and many enterprises have developed much more aggressive implementation timetables than they would have otherwise.

However, in the march to rollout these enhanced security systems some vulnerabilities and conflicts have surfaced.

This calls out the need for all players in the payment ecosystem to work together on open security standards, streamlined certification processes and shared education on best implementation practices.

EMV tokens, as first implemented by Apple Pay and the payment card networks, are based on different protocols than the tokenization systems merchants use to limit the scope of PCI audits, leading to potentially conflicting token implementations.

Merchants who use their own tokenization system, and also accept Apple Pay or other EMV token payments, will end up with multiple tokens for one card number, defeating a major reason why many merchants adopted tokenization in the first place.

As far as point-to-point encryption (P2PE) is concerned, P2PE can usually be turned on within 3 months if the solution uses remote key injection and management. Physically injecting keys into each card reader in a “safe room” under its own “lock and key” obviously takes much longer.

Once deployed, P2PE can help protect all card transactions against data breaches. Retailers we regularly speak with say they will turn on EMV acceptance “later”. They rightfully view EMV as mainly helping the card brands and issuers, although when EMV becomes ubiquitous it will help everyone.