CBN, NCC collaborate to boost Mobile Financial Services

 

The Deputy Governor, Operations, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Alhaji Suleiman Barau, has stressed the need to adopt measures to curb security breaches in the implementation of the Mobile Money Scheme (MMS) as well as strengthen the services of telecommunication companies in the country.

 

Alhaji Barau stated this in Abuja on Tuesday, June 7, 2016, when he paid a courtesy visit to the Executive Vice-Chairman, Nigeria Communications Commission, Engr. Prof. Umar Danbatta.

 

The Deputy Governor listed some of the challenges confronting the Mobile Money Scheme to include weak processes associated with SIM Swap that leaves customers vulnerable to fraudulent elements, high cost of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data USSD by Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), lack of secured USSD Gateway for financial services and allocation of unique USSD Codes to licensed Payment Services Providers.

 

 

While noting that the challenges had adverse impact on mobile financial services and negated the national financial inclusion strategy, he said the telecommunication companies (TELCOs) played vital roles in the mobile money Service delivery value chain as the framework allowed the TELCOs to provide the infrastructure and the agent network to drive agent banking and mobile financial service.

 

Alhaji Barau therefore called for greater collaboration between the financial and telecommunication regulators, urging the resuscitation of the CBN/NCC joint technical committee to enable inter-agency collaborations to address the challenges plaguing the mobile money operation and other financial service delivery.

 

In his response, the Executive Vice-Chairman, Nigeria Communications Commission NCC, Engr. Prof. Danbatta expressed the Commission’s commitment to engage the CBN.

 

Prof. Danbatta assured that the NCC would work tirelessly and diligently to ensure that every challenge in the financial services is resolved. He also assured that the Commission would ensure the integrity of the gateway, which he declared would swing into action immediately to guarantee that the USSD gateway is adequately secured.

 

Top staff of the CBN who accompanied Alhaji Barau on the visit included the Director, Banking and Payments System Department, Mr. Dipo Fatokun and Deputy Director and Head, Payments System Policy Oversight, Banking and Payments System Department, Mr. Musa Jimoh. Others were Assistant Director, Banking and Payments System Department, Mr. Sola Agboola and members of the Secretariat of the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF).