The Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) Dr. Ernest Addison has disclosed that the central bank will soon publish guidelines for players in the financial sector to reduce cyber fraud.
This follows an increase in the cases of cyber fraud, particularly, mobile money fraud in the country.
Speaking on Day Two of the Financial Inclusion Symposium organized by MasterCard in Ghana, Dr. Addison disclosed that the central bank is reviewing a new set of guidelines to halt cyber fraud.
“More recently, cyber fraud is gaining attention and becoming a key threat to financial institutions whose systems to end users are being exploited”.
“As a regulator, the Bank is reviewing a new set of guidelines to address the cyber security issues in the industry to mitigate and reduce the impact of cyber fraud,” he added.
Dr. Addison explained that the move will complement the recently launched Ghana Government key projects, that is, the biometric national identification project and the digital national address system to address some inherent operational risks and improve efficiency and promote confidence in digital transactions.
He recalled that as part of the broader strategy to create an enabling regulatory environment for convenient, efficient and safe retail payment and funds transfer mechanisms, the Bank of Ghana issued the Guidelines for E-Money Issuers (EMIs) and the Agent Guidelines in June 2015.
“The broad objective of the EMI Guidelines was to promote financial inclusion initiatives by extending financial services beyond the traditional branch-based channels and to limit e-money issuance to licensed Dedicated Electronic Money Issuer institutions,” he said.
He observed that the guidelines formed a core part of the Bank’s strategy to create a congenial regulatory environment for scaling up adoption and use of a convenient, efficient and safe electronic retail payments and funds transfer.
He added that the Agent Guidelines were also issued to promote the use of agents as channels for delivery of financial services with specific necessary safeguards and controls to mitigate the associated risks and safeguard consumer protection.