Rising fraud in banking and mobile money services risks eroding customer confidence, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has cautioned, turning the spotlight on banks and their staff.
In a banking sector stability report released yesterday, the CBK said money lost through cybercrime and phone fraud remained high in 2021.
“Rapid adoption of mobile money has been categorised as disruptive in the financial services provision. It has, however, come with new risks and raised consumer protection issues, with implications on financial stability risks,” it said.
The report said customers who reported to have lost money through cybercrime accounted for 6.1 per cent for mobile bank users, 25.9 per cent for mobile money users and 6.8 per cent for bank account users.
Money lost through fraud was reported at 7.5 per cent and 53.3 per cent of mobile bank users who attributed the loss to internal (from the provider) fraud and phone-related fraud respectively.
On other hand, 34.5 per cent and 25.9 per cent of bank account holders attributed the loss to internal fraud and phone-related fraud, respectively, with “implications on consumer confidence and overall financial stability,” CBK warned.
The rapid adoption of digital financial services has come with increased cyberattack threats, as captured in reports by the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team Coordination Centre, which is mandated to coordinate response and manage cybersecurity incidents.
The centre detected 158.4 million cyber threats as of June 30, 2021, up from 110.9 million in 2020. This surge directed at local targets was due to increased Internet penetration, uptake of e-commerce and cloud-based services to support remote working and increased social media use.
By December, mobile money providers had 27.1 million active customers, up from 25.7 million in 2020, or a 5.3 per cent annual growth in new customers.
In total, 1.9 million new mobile money customers were registered in the 12 months to December 2021, down from 3.6 million new customers registered between January and December 2020.
