The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has admitted that its mobile money expectations are not met, despite N5 billion annual turnover recorded by operators.

CBN Director, Banking Supervision, and Chairman, Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF), ‘Dipo Fatokun who disclosed this at the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) June meeting held in Lagos at the weekend, said: “It is not correct that we have not made progress in mobile money. It is right that our expectations on mobile money has not fully been met and probably because we were very ambitious in setting the target”.

He regretted that most of the mobile money transactions are for subscription payment, and remittances, like mobile wallet sending money to account in the bank, or account in the bank sending money to mobile wallet.

Fatokun said the mobile money space started in Nigeria about two years ago, adding that about 21 Mobile Money Operators have already been licenced. “What we have discovered is that what has led to slow growth is because of lack of agency. For mobile money to be successful, you must have agent. The CBN did report setting up some conditions on agency banking which the mobile money operators are keying into,” he said.

“We have also released a guideline on super agent structure. We expect that some of the telcos, if not all, will serve as super agents. Two of the telcos already have our approval in principle, to make their agents available for mobile money”.

Speaking on the NeFF 2014 annual report with theme: “e-Fraud: Fighting the battle, winning the war”, which was also launched at the event, Fatokun said Nigeria needs to put necessary controls to avoid fraud in the e-payment space. “We have articles there to open the eyes of the public on how to stop electronic fraud. We have articles from different stakeholders. It will help you on what you need to avoid if you want your account to be safe,” he said.

He said the assessment of the e-payment industry is that the value and volume of electronic transactions in e-payment has been in the increase. However, he said the value and volume of fraud, though globally is on the increase, but in Nigeria is on decrease because of so many controls in place.

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