MoMo Fraud: MTN Invests $2.5m Into Artificial Intelligence To Fight MoMo Fraud

MoMo Fraud: MTN Invests $2.5m Into Artificial Intelligence To Fight MoMo Fraud

MTN Ghana has announced that it is investing US$2.5 million to beef up its artificial intelligence so they can win the fight against mobile money fraud.

General Manager of Mobile Money Limited of MTN, Eli Hini made the announcement at their maiden virtual Annual General Meeting in Accra.

He disclosed that so far, MTN has aided the police to arrest over 40 mobile money fraudsters and some moneys have been retrieved from the fraudsters in some of the cases, based on intelligence MTN provided.

Eli Hini acknowledged that the more MTN Mobile Money grows, the more the fraudsters also get sophisticated, but MTN is on daily basis improving its systems and process to weed them out.

“We have built systems that are able to pick intelligence and lead to police swoops in specific communities where the fraudsters were arrested and some money retrieved for customers,” he said.

He, however, noted that whereas MTN invests heavily in artificial intelligence to fight MoMo fraud, it also behooves on customers to be on high alert and not expose themselves to fraudsters.

“Never discuss your mobile money transactions with anyone who calls and says they are calling from MTN – never give out your MoMo PIN to anyone who claims he is from MTN – if you are not participating in any promotion, ignore any one who calls you and claims you have won a reward,” he cautioned.

Eli Hini said it was important for customers to remember that “MTN will never call you and ask you to send MoMo transfer in order to claim a prize – because if you really win a prize from us we will call you with 0244300000 and invite you to an event to receive your prize.”

He said MTN has been able to capture a lot of the tactics of the MoMo fraudsters and they do share that information on their various social media platforms so it is important for customers to always follow that education and know how to identify and ward off the fraudsters.

Eli Hini also revealed that some 15.5 million Ghanaians have mobile money wallets and a total of GHS4 billion has been transacted on the MTN Mobile Money platform since its inception, saying that it is good for the economy because most of that money remain in the financial sector and are being invested in projects.

He also called for a centralised identification system to enable an easier detection and apprehension of fraudsters.