BREAKING NEWS, Business
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The Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum advises the Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Information Technology Agency, to work toward enacting data protection law for Nigeria
THE Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum, NEFF, sub-committee of the financial services industry, has recommended that the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and the National Information Technology Agency, NITDA, should work together to pursue the enactment of a Data Protection Law for Nigeria.
Dipo Fatokun, chairman, NeFF, who said this in Lagos, during the unveiling of the forum’s 2015 annual report, restated the commitment of the federal government to forge alliance with stakeholders in the e-payment value chain to curb electronic fraud in the payment system.
“The committee submitted its report last Thursday and has been given further work to come up with policies that will assist the banks and other players in the financial services industry on cloud computing,” Fatokun said.
According to him, another committee had been set up to consider the issue of fraud at merchant locations in terms of how some merchant may collide with some fraudsters, or fraudster using their channel to commit fraud and how such merchants and acquirers (banks) can protect themselves.
He added: “We are monitoring what is happening in the payment space. If the attempt is increasing, and the losses are decreasing, it means that the activities of regulators and collaborative organisations like NeFF are actually yielding the expected result.”
Fatokun noted that lack of knowledge was the main reason why the spate of electronic fraud has not abated, adding that the forum considered it necessary at its quarterly meeting to educate members on the activities of fraudsters.
“The normal strategies is that the forum comes together to discuss, debate and agree, then go back with policy formulation which is escalated to the committee of governors of the CBN. They will consider the type of proposal that we bring that could make the payment system safer. If they approve it, we will then issue it as a policy circular to the industry. This will become something that is binding on everybody.
“The industry is speaking with one voice and we are monitoring what is happening. Over time, when the attempts are increasing and the losses are decreasing, it would discourage those making the attempts because what this means is that lower number of fraud attempts are resulting in losses to bank customers. So we are making that space to be left remunerative. This shows that we are making progress,” he said.
Also speaking at the event, Umma Dutse, director, consumer protection, CBN, said: “We are inundated with several claims and counter-claims that show how exposed and unprotected we can be when we fail to observe the etiquettes that govern the use of e-payment products.”
— Jul 18, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
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