Mobile financial services in Ghana - Measures for achieving safety and security of services
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2017-04
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Abstract
The use of mobile phones has become part of the daily activities of about ninety percent of
Ghanaian adults. This has contributed to the rapid adoption of mobile financial services by
Ghanaians. In 2014, Bank of Ghana reported over two million registered users. Africa and
the rest of the world have also experienced this exponential growth in the use of mobile
financial services. Due to the huge money it is raising in that sector, fraudsters have made
several attempts on these systems leading to the loss of enormous sums of money. The
objective of this study is to understand the mobile financial service ecosystem in Ghana and
internationally, assess what risks users may face and suggest measures to help prevent or
reduce the effects of these risks.
In order to better understand the concept of mobile financial service, some academic papers
were reviewed revealing the components of the ecosystem, risks that these players may face
and some proposed solutions by scholars. Case studies, in-depth interviews and secondary
data were gathered for this research.
Findings from the data collected show that some risks users may face include: malware
infection of devices or point of sale terminals, corruption of information stored on the server
of acquirers or service providers, theft of data during transaction, including man-in-the
middle attacks, advanced persistent thefts and insecure data connectivity.
Also some mitigation measures to these threats include enforcement of two factor
authentication on systems, securing data connections using Secured Socket Layer (SSL)
authentication, secure configuration, hardening of critical servers and data encryption during
transactions.
This study is limited geographically because the interviews held included players in the
mobile financial service ecosystem in Accra only. Also only three companies were
interviewed for this study due to the limited time constraint.
Description
Thesis submitted to the Department of Computer Science, Ashesi University College, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems, April 2017
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Keywords
Accra, risk, mobile financial services, mobile money, cyberfraud