Mobile Financial Tranactions
Masses of people in Africa are unbanked because of a number of factors. Access to the
Internet, long distances to bank machines and high transaction costs. The high levels
of mobile phone penetration and low transacting cost have created an ideal environment
for mobile banking and financial transacting. Mobile banking and financial transacting
are proving to be one of the fastest growing services to both the unbanked and the
banked sectors of the population.
In the past, many cases of fraud have been reported. These are mostly committed by
insiders swapping the identity of SIM cards in such a way that they can spoof the bank
in thinking it is transacting with the subscriber when they are, in fact, defrauding
the hapless victim. In other cases, gangs gain access to the information in other ways.
The TruTeq IMSI verification procedure allows the bank to confirm that they are transacting
with the same SIM Card every time. Each SIM card is unique and this verification feature
prevents SIM swopping completely. Because the gateway encrypts the data stream as the
very first step in the chain, any of the data packets intercepted or obtained in any way
becomes useless to the crooks.
