The number of Nigerians who have continued to fall victims to online fraud locally known as ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ has continued to increase on a year-on-year basis according to a report
A report from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS) entitled, ‘Fraud in the Nigerian Financial Services’, noted that while the channel distribution showed only a moderate shift of fraud attempt towards mobile and web channels from last year’s figures, analysing the number of fraud attempts showed a more alarming narrative.
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According to the NIBSS, this trend is expected to continue as Nigeria further grows financial inclusion and customers become increasingly dependent on electronic channels for their day-to-day transactions.
The analysis showed that while in 2019, frauds via ATM was 19 per cent, it decreased to nine per cent in 2020. PoS recorded six percent in 2019; it was seven percent a year after. Internet banking fraud was four per cent in 2019 and dropped to one per cent in 2020.
Between 2019 and 2020, the NIBSS report claimed there was no fraud committed via cheques, eCommerce platforms, across the counter and non-electronic platforms. However, though, in 2019, web fraud recorded 51 percent, it dropped to 47 per cent in 2020, but frauds from mobile platforms, which was 20 percent in 2019, increased to 35 percent after a year.
Going deeper into Nigerian industry data, NIBSS noted that the actual figures reported by the industry are quite striking. This year, about 91 percent of all fraud attempts as of September 2020 have resulted in a total loss and more than N5 billion was lost as a result of fraud within the same period.
The report noted that fraud has become a global phenomenon ravaging many countries of the world including the USA describing it as a scheme that seeks to take advantage of vulnerabilities in various systems to criminally achieve a financial gain.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
