Fraudsters Steal N2.19Bn in 2016 – Report

The electronic payment space transaction fraud rose by 82 percent in 2016 with an estimated N2.19 billion lost to cyber criminals, according to the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) annual report 2016.

The report released Tuesday, titled: ‘a changing payments ecosystem: the security challenge’ said “the industry recorded about 82 percent increase in the reported fraud case, when compared to 2015 and over 1200 percent compared to 2014.”

However it noted that “despite the 82 percent increase in the reported fraud cases, with an estimated N2.19 billion loss to fraud, the industry was able to reduce fraud by 2.7 percent, when compared to the 2015 figure.”

A breakdown of the fraud according to various payment channels revealed that N511.1 million fraud occurred across the counter, N464.5 million through ATMs, N320 million through internet banking, and N243.3 million through POS.

A further breakdown also showed that mobile banking saw N235.1 million fraud, eCommerce N132.2 million, web fraud N190.9 million, Kiosk N10.1 million, cheque N4.5 million and N190.9 million through other platforms not categorized.

Aggregately, electronic platforms had the highest level of fraud with 77 per cent, while the non-electronic platforms witnessed 23 per cent fraud cases.

But “comparing the attempted fraud against the actual loss, the industry was able to salvage 49.7 percent of the total amount attempted by these fraudsters within the years” the report said adding that “these figures informed us that there are more attempts on yearly basis with different innovation tricks or modus operandi to take advantage of the system.”

The report said looking ahead in 2017, the financial industry as a whole must collaborate to ensure a wider gap exists between the attempted fraud and actual loss.