BY JONAH NWOKPOKU

The Nigeria electronic Fraud Forum, NeFF has said it plans to set up banking risk information centre to tackle all forms of fraud in the financial services sector.

Director, Banking and Payments Systems Department, CBN, Dipo Fatokun disclosed while speaking at the  Nigeria electronic Fraud Forum, NeFF held in Lagos

He said that following a tour to South Africa in 2014 by NeFF to understudy the operations of the South Africa Banking Risk Information Centre’s success on combating financial crime, with a view to adopting some strategies to enhance the security of our payment space, forum has recommended setting-up of an independent Nigeria Banking Risk Information Centre, NIBRIC which should be owned by the banks but orchestrated by Central Bank of Nigeria.

“This centre should be not-for-profit and be wholly dedicated to managing banking risk, with special focus on fraud,” he said.

According to him, “The model for NIBRIC should be derived from the South Africa model, in comparison with other models such as SIBSS in Portugal, UK Card Association, etc., taking cognizance of our peculiar environment; NIBRIC should start small, think big and scale up fast; The first phase of NIBRIC should be commercial crime and the immediate setting up of a forensic laboratory and a Security Operations Centre.

He also explained that the forum has entered into collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to tackle card fraud in Non-EMV environments as part of its commitment “to creating a safer payment system, increasing user confidence and facilitating collaboration among players in the payments ecosystem.”

Speaking on the recent circular by the CBN that bank customers must inform their banks before using their cards overseas, he said it was an attempt to tackle payment fraud in non-EMV environment.

He said: “You remember that before now, we have issued a secular on the use of cards on non Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, EMV environment.   That was what we observed to be the pattern, that people are using social engineering tactics to get card information of unsuspecting members of the public. And they will now clone these cards. And because some of the environments are Non-EMV compliant yet, they will use these cards to conduct transactions abroad on PoS. And that is we have issued a circular requiring bank customers to inform their banks when they are travelling abroad, so that those cards will be enabled for use over there. And if you are here in Nigeria, there is no way anyone will clone it and use it in Non-EMV environment.”