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Stanbic Bank stops fraudulent agents
Stanbic Bank is the latest victim of Uganda's growing cybercrime. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- The bank has since mounted efforts with security agencies to recover funds from an undisclosed number of implicated agents.
Stanbic Bank Uganda said Wednesday it had ''countered fraudulent activity by a few of its 3,500 banking agents- aimed at defrauding the bank through a process-flow error that affected some third-party agent banking transactions.’’
The bank has since mounted efforts with security agencies to recover funds from an undisclosed number of implicated agents from the error in the banking model adopted by the organization three years ago.
‘‘The incident did not affect customer transactions or balances and agency banking services continue to operate normally. Effective operational safeguards are in place to prevent future recurrences,’’ Stanbic Bank’s corporate communications wing added.
The bank did not necessarily reveal the amount of money retained by the agents that account for nearly 30 per cent of its total transactions.
‘‘Effective operational safeguards are in place to prevent future recurrences,’’ the bank said.
Numerous cases of cybercrime have recently been reported and related to the ‘Agents’ banking model across the country.
An exponential growth of quickly accessible bank-agents across the country has bred hackers or even organized criminal syndicates that take advantage of the gaps in the model and steal money from accounts upon accessing vital-private data of bank customers.
An annual 2020 Police report estimates that cybercrimes occasioned loss of almost Shs16b in Uganda.
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story stated that Stanbic Bank Uganda had suffered a breach of its banking systems, which consequently affected monetary transactions. This was an incorrect statement and the error has since been fixed. We apologise for inconveniences caused.
