Seal loopholes in mobile cash transfers

The technology of transferring money through mobile phones has unbelievably revolutionised money transfer beyond the wildest imagination of Kenyans who have been around long enough to recall the frustrations that was associated with telegraphic money transfers.

It has made it possible for millions of Kenyans to send and receive money almost instantaneously. It is an innovation that one has little or nothing to complain about.

Its effectiveness and efficiency notwithstanding, I feel constrained to raise questions about the security of the systems as offerred by leading mobile phone service providers Safaricom (as MPesa), Airtel (Airtel Money), Yu (Yu Cash) and Orange (Orange Money).

I don’t want to talk about money people have lost through sending to wrong mobile numbers. This is money service providers can easily trace should the unintended recipient refuse to return to sender.

I am thinking about two forms of cash losses that raises the question of security and integrity of the transfers.

The first is where customers have lost money through people masquerading as employees of service providers trying to assist account holders to recover money they inadvertently send to wrong people. That these ‘clever’ people can provide ‘instructions’ which, if the account holder can act on, and money is ‘transferred’ from his account speaks very little about the integrity and security of the system.

Security alerts

We cannot entirely attribute the loss of the money to the gullibility of account owners. There is something the matter with a system that can enable unscrupulous people to ransack somebody’s account using techniques that millions of laymen in ICT know little about.

The second reservation I have about the systems is that some people have lost large sums of money even without taking ‘instructions’ from anybody regarding their accounts. They have accessed their accounts only to discover they read zero or have negligible amounts of money compared to what they had deposited in or received into their account.

I appreciate that some service providers, especially Safaricom, have sent out alerts to account holders. I appreciate that they have their best to protect the accounts of their clients. But the greatest Public Relations or Customer Care strategy over this issue is to upgrade the security and integrity of their systems. Talking and empty assurances mean little to account holders. It will not allay the anxieties people have developed about the safety of their money within these systems.

Service providers must also restrict people who have the knowledge and nuances about the workings of this technology. Only people with proven integrity should have access to the nerve centre of the systems.

Decentralising and devolving knowledge of such systems may prove the undoing of a technology that still remains a marvel. We all know the evils of sharing and decentralising information. Knowledge, it has been said, is power. You don’t democratise the sharing of sensitive information.

Recently, US top secrets were revelead through Wikileaks because of wild sharing of and transfer of information. It can easily happen to mobile phone money transfer systems where persons whose integrity is not watertight.

{Kennedy Buhere, Kitui}

Mobile phone service providers should include in their registry next of kin for client just in case of emergencies. Just imagine the many account holders who get involved in fatal accidents. How much cash in their accounts gets lost?

{Concerned e-cash client, Via Email}