About 7,000 Mobile Money Agents of MTN have had their Wallets or accounts suspended by the company for their non-compliance with the new mobile money withdrawal security mechanism.
MTN Mobile Money introduced a directive to all its Agents to the request of customers intending to withdraw funds from their accounts to provide any legally recognized national Identification Card for validation or be denied access to the funds.
This new measure, which became enforceable from the 2nd of this month, is MTN’s response to increasing cases of impersonation and fraudulent access to customer’s mobile money wallets.
Interacting with journalists in a virtual media briefing, Chief Executive Officer of MTN Mobile Money, Eli Hini, disclosed that Mobile Money Agents whose wallets have been blocked have been given a grace period of up to tomorrow to access their capital after which MTN Mobile Money will educate them on the importance of the new security measure and why they must also demand that every customer produces an ID card before withdrawal.
The affected Agents will then be made to sign a commitment agreement with the company to enforce the policy before they would be allowed back into the mobile money transaction business. The seven thousand Agents sanctioned form 3% of the over 250,000 registered MoMo Agents employed by MTN across the country to transact mobile money business.
Mr. Hini said from today an additional security feature in the form of a ‘pop up’ of customer’s personal details would be rolled out for a Mobile Money Agent to validate the personal information as captured on the available ID Card before customers would gain access to their money. This, he noted, is a confidence-building mechanism to safeguard funds saved with MTN MoMo from fraudsters.
Mr. Hini noted that apart from complaints of delays in accessing their wallets by customers, the new security measure has been successful and appealed to all stakeholders to support it, so as to protect their funds against scammers.
Mr. Hini emphasized the call on mobile money customers not to expose their PIN codes to anybody including Agents since anything contrary to this will compromise safety of their monies.
