Be mindful of MoMo fraudsters – MTN urges consumers

While mobile money transactions have increased financial inclusion and made money transfers less stressful over the past years; it comes with some disadvantages as well.

One of the challenges for users of the platform in Ghana these days is the phenomenon of Mobile Money fraud.

The fraud is either perpetuated physically through robbery attacks on Mobile Money vendors or through a more sophisticated approach where a person’s money can be stolen electronically from their wallet.

General Manager of MTN Ghana, Eli Hene, who spoke to the media on the development on the sidelines of the launch of the MTN MoMo Month 2020, said one sure way for people not to fall victim to any of these fraudsters is to be vigilant, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic has increased MoMo transactions.

On the issue of fraud, we have always been talking about the three golden rules and it is important that our customers keep that in mind. First of all the fraudster is not able to be effective if he is working independently and that is why they call send messages to consumers to try and get your mobile money PIN. Also, you should not entertain a call from someone saying you have won a promotion especially if you have not participated in one, and thirdly do not allow anybody to perform transactions on your behalf because that gives the person access to your PIN”.

Mobile money is a payment type based on accounts held by a mobile operator and accessible from subscribers’ mobile phones. Mobile Money was first introduced in Ghana in the year 2009.

With an initial slow growth, Mobile money transactions recorded 32.8 billion Ghana cedis in value as of the end of 2019, signifying more than 45 percent increase from the previous year’s value; according to the Economic and Financial data.

Factors like increasing trend of convenience in service delivery, expansion in mobile money agent network and implementation of mobile money interoperability, are driving the mobile money market in the country.

Various regulations and guidelines have also been implemented to strengthen and protect the mobile money system.

According to the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) Half Year Performance report, the volume of Mobile Money Interoperability transactions for the first half of 2020, shot up by over 444 percent compared to the same period last year.

According to the report, transactions from January to June 2020, stood at 13.8 million compared to 2.5 million recorded in the same period last year.