Information and Communication Technology, Bank Verification Number and Fraud Prevention in Nigerian Banking Industry

Abstract

Fraud was cited as Nigeria’s biggest problem both in the public and private sector. It is worrisome to note that bank staffs connive with outsiders to perpetrate fraud, even the emergence of ICT recently makes it easy to perpetrate fraud and it was also established that fraud contributed immensely to failure of most banks. Fraud is not peculiar either in magnitude or sophistication to Nigeria, the crash in the multinational companies in the wake of fraud and accounting scandals attests to this fact. Banks nonetheless played a dubious role in the collapse of these corporations. Structured questionnaire was prepared to get the opinions of both workers and bank customers using all the banking industry in Nigeria. This paper endeavors to examine Information Communication Technology, Bank Verification Number and Fraud Prevention in the Banking industry in Nigeria, their responses were critically analyzed and the study concluded that the introduction of Bank Verification Number with the aid of Information communication technology (ICT) is an effective tool that will reduce the incidence of fraud to the barest minimum in Nigeria, the use of ICT should also be encouraged but with strict security and thus the financial institutions and their business partner must continue to seek and develop new solutions to the issue of customer authentication and transaction validation.