Visa, a provider of payment solutions, has stated it would continue to work with businesses, organizations, and institutions to provide technology solutions that would lower fraud in digital payments in order to address the rising rate of online fraud in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, which has been prompted by the significant shift to digital payment following COVID-19.
At a recent virtual conference with the theme: “Securing the Future of Digital Payment in sub-Saharan Africa,” Irene Auma, Senior Director and Head of Risk for sub-Saharan Africa at Visa, provided the assurance that there had been a significant shift from non-card transactions to digital transactions involving the use of cards.
“In Q1 2021, before lockdown and the active pandemic stage happened, the contactless rate in payments was 42 per cent. In nine months, it increased up to 60 per cent and maintained growth after that. Visa’s intervention at the beginning of the pandemic, helped to reduce fraud rate growth, which kept the contactless fraud rate at its lowest level,” Auma said.
She claimed that the significant change resulted in an uptick in online attacks, where the ransomware community began actively targeting businesses. In sub-Saharan Africa, there are now more digital hazards due to sophisticated attacks and digital plotting, according to Auma.
She said, assuring customers of a safe digital ecosystem in sub-Saharan Africa, “In 2020 throughout the pandemic, the UAE had a 25% spike in cyber-attacks, which included 1.1 million phishing assaults, the most prevalent tactic for carrying out cyber attacks.”
She asserts that Visa has been doing its share to secure the ecosystem and encourage consumer adoption of digital payments in order to improve the quality of transactions inside the digital payment environment.
“Visa is doing so much to ensure safety of consumers’ online transactions by introducing new ways of verifying and authenticating the customers through the support of digital-based authentication that will make it possible to identify who the real customer is at any given transaction,” Auma said.
