MTN Alleges $53.7 Million Mobile Money Fraud
Barely a month after launching its mobile money payments service bank, MoMo, it's reporting a ₦22.3 billion ($53.7 million) mobile money fraud by 18 Nigerian banks.
According to a Lawsuit dated May 30, MTN claims that the amount was transferred in error to 8,000 accounts maintained by the 18 banks' customers.
In the suit, Chief Executive Officer of MoMo PSB, Anthony Usoro Usoro, also claimed that the fraud was committed over a total of 700,000 transactions, over a one-month period. Upon realising the fraud on May 24, MoMo PSB reportedly shut down its service to prevent further liability.
The CEO also mentioned that it was resorting to legal action upon the banks' insistence that only court orders could bring action for reversal.
The banks listed as defendants in the suit include: Access Bank, Ecobank, Fidelity Bank, FirstBank, First City Monument Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Heritage Bank, Polaris Bank, Providus Bank, Stanbic IBTC, Standard Chartered, Sterling Bank, SunTrust Bank, Union Bank, United Bank for Africa, Unity Bank, Wema Bank, and Zenith Bank.
Zoom out: While this definitely calls into question both MTN's backend operations, it also highlights a problem many fintechs are having with Nigerian banks: reversals for fraud cases take forever, and are impossible to trace. At least according to the banks. Maybe MoMo's trailblazing starts by helping Nigerian solve this problem.
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