By BUUMBA CHIMBULU
THE Bank of Zambia (BoZ) has warned consumers to be more careful and avoid participating in schemes where they end up being swindled large amounts of money, as it focuses on digital cyber security to ensure that transactions are safe.
The Central Bank is aware that some people had been scammed through illegal schemes, says Governor Christopher Mvunga.
Of late, the social media has been awash with complaints of victims who have been swindled large sums of money through scams on the digital transactions.
“I think it has been alluded to that the challenge that digital economy brings is also risks associated with the major transactions.
“I think we have been reading of late of different people being scammed by all sorts of schemes so we need to be a little bit more careful because as a central bank we can indicate that digital cyber security is one of the ways to ensure that these platforms are safe and secure,” Mr Mvunga said.
Mr Mvunga said this in an interview on the sidelines of the COMESA Business Council’s 2nd Digital Financial Inclusion Public Private Dialogue.
The Governor however indicated that the BoZ had introduced traditions guidelines to guide commercial banks with regards to cyber security.
This, he explained, was important because of the need of data protection.
“We need individual’s data to be protected so that is why we are coming up with those guidelines. It is a whole comprehensive law, you can look at it.
“It talks about how you store data, where you put your servers and the encryptions required to make sure that data is safe because you do not want your personal details to be abused or taken advantage of,” Mr Mvunga said.
Meanwhile, Mr Mvunga said the national financial switch was almost operational as most of the commercial banks had subscribed.
The switch, Mr Mvunga explained, allowed consumers interoperability between banks as they were able to pay from anywhere. Mr Mvunga said the switch would open up the payment gateway.
“They are just very few we have given an exemption up to 31st December 2021, so it up and running.
“There are just one or two banks that are concluding and what has caused the delay is because of covid-19 where they need to bring in their information technology experts from their head offices to come and work,” he said.
