Onajite: Awareness Creation is Key to Achieving Cashless Economy
Executive Secretary and CEO of Electronic Payment Providers Association of Nigeria, Mrs. Regha Onajite, spoke with Emma Okonji on the gains of electronic payment system. Excerpts:
What is your assessment of electronic payment among Nigerians and how has it helped in driving the cashless initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria?
The Central Bank of Nigeria is keen at making the country a relatively cashless economy, hence it introduced the cashless policy some few years ago. Since the introduction, Nigerians have accepted electronic payment system, which is the major driver of the cashless policy. People are beginning to see the advantages of dealing less with physical cash and doing more of electronic transactions and since then the volume of electronic transactions through the use of various electronic channels, has increased and we are happy about that. Although most Nigerians still prefer the use of physical cash, but I think with time, more Nigerians will embrace cashless.
Electronic transactions have been growing and it will still grow more as we begin to address in a short while, its limitations in every state of the federation. People are beginning to understand that the cashless scheme is not for the benefit of the government but for the general good of the people.
In terms of volume of financial transactions in 2014, we can say that we had over 100 million transactions, according to the report from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), on electronic transactions, which came to a total value of over N40 trillion in 2014. This is higher than what we had in 2013. So, there is growth and people are appreciating electronic payment platforms. It comes with ease, though there may still pockets of challenges. But in all, Nigeria is doing well in electronic transactions and E-PPAN will continue to work hard to improve on those areas of challenges. What are the key initiatives that have been taken in recent times to improve electronic payment system in Nigeria? There has been a lot of improvement in the payment chain industry and one of the major things that have happened in the industry is the inauguration of the Payment System Strategy Board (PSSB) by the Governor of CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele. Since then, we have had four payment systems boards inaugurated and nine working groups and four special interest groups. All of these inaugurations are to help deepen the financial system and also to improve on what we have been doing as a nation concerning the payment system. I see this as a very great move because people now belong to different working groups, working for the success of the cashless policy.
Since the introduction of cashless policy, the volume of electronic transactions has increased and Nigeria is making significant improvement in this direction. Tell us other initiatives have been implemented in the electronic payment industry?
There are lots of other initiatives that have been implemented. For example, there is central anti-fraud system that is hosted in the Nigeria Interbank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) and as we speak, the pilot phase has already started and there are transactions currently going on there. Some banks are signing up for transactions on the central anti-fraud system. Also, within the industry, the Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum (NEFF) has come up with a lot of initiatives one of which, is the plan to implement the Security Operation Centre (SOC). This will be implemented soon and it will be driven by a new organisation that will be set up by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) within the Bankers’ Committee. The plans are already on ground.
It is also of note to say that sometimes last year, the industry paid a working visit to South Africa for us to understudy what they are doing in South Africa concerning the management of fraud and we found that they have a central risk information centre, which takes care of banking risk in the whole of South Africa. So, we spend quite a number of days with them understudying the way it works and we know that similar thing will happen in Nigeria soon. Already, we have the central bank risk information centre. So, quite a lot has been happening. One thing that has discouraged most Nigerians from embracing cashless, is the fear of electronic fraud. What are the measures put in place to address the concerns of this group of Nigerians? The industry has implemented a lot of initiatives to address electronic fraud, but even at that, fraud still exists in the financial sector.
The issue with electronic fraud is that it is a global and it is not peculiar with Nigeria alone. Those who engage in electronic fraud, take advantage online and offline opportunities to perpetrate financial crimes. What the fraudsters do, is to calculate very well and migrate to areas that is less secure. But several measures are being taken to improve online security, just as the fraudsters are also making smart moves to break into people’s data to steal and most times, corrupt their information.
In 2014 we had increased fraud, compared to 2013, but then, a lot of measures are being put in place to address all of that. The reason it looks as if fraud is in the increase, is that the volume of electronic transactions is fast increasing, thus attracting more fraud in the system.
But a lot of security features are being put in place to checkmate that. The most important of all is customer awareness. We are doing a lot to see if we can make bank customers aware of what the risk and challenges are because if all of us are aware of the risks involved, it would be easier to deal with it because people won’t fall easily into the hands of fraudsters. One of the ways through which Nigerians have been defrauded is ‘phishing’, where fraudsters hide their identities to defraud people. How has this been addressed?
Phishing is just one of the several ways people get defrauded, by sending false emails, make false representations, send junks and pretending to be genuine as if they are trustworthy entities and then. They are able to deceive people and make them part with their money and valuables. When you talk of phishing, we have seen these criminals create an impression that they are genuine entities and from that impression, they are able to harvest people’s emails, and get other details such as account and personal identity numbers (PINs), just to defraud people.
So that is what phishing is all about. Interestingly, the only way we can deal with phishing is for people to be well informed of what these fraudsters are doing and when you are informed, you would be able to guide yourself and protect your personal details. The question is what are the various manifestations of phishing? The fraudsters either send you an ordinary email claiming to be who they are not, asking you to provide your details to them. People are not aware this may be fraudulent and that when they get such emails, they respond and fall prey. Criminals have also now improved on their techniques. What they do now is to create a website that looks like the customer’s bank website and then, they ask you to fill in your details online. So, when you fill in your details online, they are able to get those personal details, your passwords, your mails and all of that. That is one method. Another method that they use is to send SMS and even make voice calls to tell all sorts of lies that look attractive. Recently, I got a funny email that was warning me against giving out my details online and not to respond to fraudulent emails and at the end of the mail, they were asking me for my details, and I quickly knew it was fraudulent. What is been done to protect bank customers from falling prey to online fraudsters?
Its all about awareness creation among bank customers, which we as E-PPAN has been doing. So what people need to do is to be vigilant and be able to protect themselves from fake websites. Banks are also doing a lot in this regard, because on a daily basis, they pull down these phishing websites. So, what People need to do is to be cautious when they receive emails. They must check who is the senders of the emails are before responding. If the sender is not recognized then they should avoid such mails or better still, delete them.
Even if a customer wants to give any detail to his or her bank, such customer must do so through voice call and must first initiate the call.
If anybody initiate a call and claims to be calling from a particular bank, we strongly advise the customers not to divulge any personal information. Now, another thing is that you may be on the internet and something pops up and it looks interesting and too good. Sometimes, when it looks too good to be true, avoid opening it. Mobile money operation seems to be losing focus in Nigeria. What is your take on this?
I think mobile money, as we also know, is the best channel for financial inclusion. When we say it is the best channel for financial inclusion, we mean that mobile money operators should target the grassroots, where their market is.
I think it is based on this that the central bank is currently reviewing the mobile money operators’ policy. They are reviewing the document so that only people who have the financial muscle may go into the business because of huge capital involved in the business, but if you look at it, especially from the cost of obtaining the licence, you will think it is a small business. Introducing mobile money is introducing a completely new culture and for culture to change, a lot of enlightenment and education need to take place. They are dealing with people that are not banked and a lot of them are uneducated and do not really understand what mobile money entails.
So, it is going to take a lot of education and orientation. So, maybe what we need to do is to ensure increased government intervention in the area of education, in the area of enlightenment and sensitization at the grassroots. Though E-PPAN has been doing quite a lot in this regard but we are still scratching the surface as we speak now. So, People need to be more enlightened that if they need mobile money, which will benefit them in many ways. E-PPAN is currently planning to holding the maiden edition of e-Government Summit in Nigeria. What are its objectives?
The e-government summit is a flagship programme of E-PPAN and our plan for the summit is going to be very big. Previously, E-PPAN organises the summit for government, and we were able to raise awareness on the benefits for government. Usually, when you bring electronic payment into the payment system you find that t becomes more efficient for citizens to interact with the government. But this year, we decided that to expand what we have been doing over the past three years and we are fortunate to have the support of CBN. So, what we are looking out for this year is e-government as a key sustainable development. We have seen some development in the Nigerian economy in terms of the rebasing of the economy. How can we sustain this development? How can we use electronic government so that this growth we are seeing in the economy can be felt by ordinary man on the street? These are some of the issues we seek to address with the summit this year.