The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has set N100, 000 as limit for customers to transfer money via mobile phones using short codes. It was gathered that the decision was made due to the risks associated with mobile banking.
“Concerns have been expressed on the likely exposure of CBN-approved entities to the possible breaching of the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) accessed by financial services in view of likely vulnerabilities in the technology and the ever-growing threats,” read a tweet on the apex bank’s handle.
Also, the CBN, “Put a limit of N100,000.00 per customer, per day for transactions as may be required. However, customers desirous of higher limits shall execute documented indemnities with their banks or MMOs.”
Mandate the use of an effective 2nd-factor authentication (2FA) by customers for all transactions above N20,000. This shall be in addition to the PIN being used as 1st level authenticator, which applies to all transaction amounts.”
The new directive will start on June 2018 just as the bank noted that customers that will do transactions over N20,000 will need a pin and soft token which they would get from their banks.
Banks are also expected to “install behaviour monitoring system with capacity to detect sim swap/ churn status, user location, unusual transactions at weekends, etc.” This system is expected to be put in place by October 31st, 2018.
