Babatunde Olofin, managing director, Moniepoint Microfinance Bank, on Sunday warned Nigerians against falling victims to fraudsters who request account numbers for end-of-year rewards.
Olofin gave the advice in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos, while advising citizens not to share their account details online.
According to him, fraudsters have developed a technique where they send all manners of attractive offers for free gifts and cash, by asking the public to share account details to receive the rewards.
He also explained several other tactics including requests for people to pay certain amounts, while they lose the funds without the promised rewards and sometimes their identities stolen.
He added that some fraud victims end up innocently in jail because their accounts were used for money laundering and other advanced cybercrimes.
Olofin stressed the need for continued public enlightenment to educate Nigerians on cyber security.
He said during the Yuletide, fraudsters usually took advantage of people’s ignorance, hence the need for extra vigilance.
“My biggest advice is for people to stop sharing their account numbers in public. Some people are in prison because they had no idea what someone used their accounts for.
“People don’t love you as much to be giving you giveaways. So, you should know that they are harvesting your details. Your bank account is a private detail,” he said.
He advised that account details should be sent to people via private channels instead of posting them online.
He explained that it was important to verify genuine philanthropists doing actual giveaways before sharing any information for safety.
According to the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria (AMMBAN), Nigerian banks lost N42.6 billion to fraudsters within the second quarter of 2024.
However, Olofin said that Moniepoint MFB had adequate firewalls to protect itself and its customers from all types of fraud because all four founders of the bank were experienced software engineers.
“We’ve built up a transaction monitoring and money laundering team that has set rules internally.
“Fraudsters do a lot of things. They structure funds. They know how internal system works,” he said.
He added that the bank was working closely with organisations like the Nigerian Fraud and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to be ahead of fraudsters.
The managing director said that collaboration with law enforcement and fraud experts was to understand fraud patterns better and then build more sophisticated controls into the banks system.
He said Moniepoint was building infrastructure for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) efficiency, adding that the bank’s loans system captured a wide range of small businesses without bias.
He also said that the bank was working closely with the office of the Vice President Kashim Shettima, to ensure loans and grants got to the mos remote parts of Nigeria.
Speaking on Moniepoint’s recent achievement of unicorn status, he said the feat meant more hard work for customers’ satisfaction and increased profit.
NAN reports that the bank joined the Nigeria unicorn status because its market valuation had surpassed one billion dollars.
(NAN)
