MITIGATION OF RISK IN THE CONTTEXT OF MOBILE BANKING IN GHANA

Abstract

Mobile banking refers to the mode of making financial transactions through a mobile device, which is cell phone, computer and other digital devices. These financial transactions includes banks sending money to their clients or receiving money from their clients through mobile devices. The introduction of mobile banking has brought efficiency in the financial sector. The digital age has made mobile banking very convenient with many banks offering impressive applications. Notwithstanding these benefits, there are several security concerns and threat for the use of mobile banking. The fundamental objective of this paper was to identify risk associated with the use of mobile banking in Ghana, and to suggest mitigation measures to reduce or curtail these risks. Primary data was gathered through questionnaire in two parts that was direct/physical and online. The total number of responses received for the study were sixty six (66), and this was achieved through direct/physical and online questionnaire. The first part was direct administration of questionnaire to twenty (22) respondents at various points and this represents 33.33% of the total responses. The second part was an online questionnaire through email and WhatsApp. A total of forty four (44) responses represents 66.67 of the total responses were received through WhatsApp, and out of this number five (5) indicated that they have never used internet banking before. Table was used to analyze the data collected. Eight (8) risks were identified through the use of mobile banking in Ghana. These risks were; receiving of misleading short message services (SMS) that could prompt a customer to reveal bank account information, phishing scams email that appear to have come from a customer’s bank that include a call to take an action, such as change or reset of password, call from someone reporting to be bank official, needing to verify a customer login details for the purpose of confirming of an identity, mistakenly transfer of money to someone, unauthorized third parties gaining access to a customer bank accounts through using login details that have been stolen directly from mobile phone, lost devices that have mobile banking details saved in a text file, login details stolen over WiFi and hotspots of a bank customer, and delays in bank confirming of successful transaction leading to multiple transfers. The results of this study showed that the quick rise in the adoption of mobile banking services has been accompanied by a subsequent rise in fraud activity by individuals claiming to be associated with the banks. Those who have received misleading short message services (SMS) that could prompt them to reveal bank account information were twenty four (24) representing 39.34% of those who have used mobile banking before and this was the highest risks area identified. This should be a major concern to the banks, other stakeholders, policy makers and the country as a whole.