Banks Are To The Blame For Negligence As Robbers Visit Homes With POS Machines - Nigerians

“They pointed a gun to my head and asked me to give them the pins to my ATM cards. They came with a PoS machine and slotted in the ATM cards to verify if the pins were correct.

“After they left, I was able to reach out to two of my banks to block my accounts. They asked me some questions about my accounts which I answered and they blocked the accounts. The robbers transferred N31, 000 from my account.”

“I think the banks will have some responsibilities for it, in the sense that there has to be some qualifications for which such transfers are made. There must be a system for which that sort of thing can be stopped. This electronic banking has become an Achilles heel of the Nigerian financial system because it is being abused rampantly. But I think the banks should do more about it. Not only that, the police should be more vigilant.”

“The banks should have put in measures to prevent this kind of situation from happening. The banks bear some blame owing to negli­gence in this regard. But more importantly, we should know that Nigeria is the world secretariat of pov­erty. You can’t just lock people down at home and not expect this kind of things. We are not a serious country.”

“It is very simple. It is just to show that that person us­ing that PoS is traceable. So, it is the security offi­cials that should step up their game. Any customer given a PoS is traceable because it must have been attached to somebody and that person must give account of how money gets into his own ac­count, knowing full well that the person who transferred that money with his own card is known and traceable. It is easy to get these PoS rob­bers.

“If you go to a bank and you inform them you buy and sell, the bank will do its Know Your Customer (KYC) to confirm the information given by the customer, and then issue the PoS. That is why I said the owner is traceable. The bank will only be negligent if they are unable to do their KYC well.

“Any bank that fails to do its KYC well before issuing PoS to a customer is negli­gent and, therefore, liable. Before you issue out PoS, you must know the person and where his business is taking place.

“I don’t even expect that PoS will be issued to an in­dividual. PoS is a business equipment, issued to a busi­ness enterprise. What will any individu­al without a business need a PoS for? So, if the banks real­ly want to get the enterprise that the PoS is issued to, they will get him easily.

“It is like issuing a cheque. If you issue a cheque, it is traceable, especially when it is crossed. Armed robbers can do anything but I believe secu­rity agencies can apprehend them because it is traceable. If a bank fails to do its KYC well, then it is liable and should pay those who have been robbed.”

“It is very shocking and I think banks should put in more stringent measures to checkmate that. If armed robbers are go­ing about collecting money from people with PoS, what that means is that those in charge in the banking system are the ones to be blamed.

“It means no proper mea­sure is put in place to discov­er fraud and such bare-faced robbery by people who are users of the PoS. Also, anyone caught en­gaging in such acts should be severely punished so as to serve as a deterrent to oth­ers,”

“I don’t think banks should be blamed. People go to register business names and, in the process, they de­mand for use of PoS. So, if they now convert the PoS to carry out nefari­ous activities, you can’t hold the banks responsible. Except in situations where customers go to the banks to report that PoS was used to rob them and the banks refuse to take action. That is when the banks can be blamed,”

“Of course, that is one of the drawbacks of technol­ogy and that is why a large number of Nigerians have refused to key into internet banking.

“In fact, many Nigerians who are into internet bank­ing are the elite, the ordinary man on the street doesn’t believe in this ATM or PoS thing.
So, many people still keep their monies at home or give it to thrift collectors,”

“One, because of the un­employment level in the country, there was the intro­duction of agents that can transact business on behalf of the banks.

“Two, there are so many business organisations, even small medium enterprises (SMEs), that are permitted to have PoS. For any shopping mall that you can buy things from, because of the cashless policy of the Federal Government, they are entitled to have PoS.

How these machines get into the hands of criminals is what I don’t know. Maybe the PoS are stolen from these companies, maybe these PoS are being used by fraudulent persons – it is what should be investigated.

“If you have a shopping mall and you apply to your bank that they should give you PoS, it will be given to you, which means people coming to your mall have a right to use their card instead of paying you cash. That is part of the cash­less policy that the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced.

“It is not the banks that we should hold responsible. Yes, the banks can try to trace which banks the mon­ey was transferred to and the account it was withdrawn from, but PoS is available for all business owners that ap­plied for it. It is part of the Federal Government’s cashless poli­cy and the banks are not re­sponsible for that.”