Increasing global cyber theft notwithstanding, the Nigerian integrated transaction and payment-processing firm, Interswitch, has said the details of its over 10 million cardholders in country cannot be stolen online.In a categorical declaration expected to send shivers down the spines of cyber fraudsters and hackers, the company said on Monday, No one can steal your card details on the Internet.The companys Payment Solution Director, Mr. Charles Ifedi, said Interswitch had improved on the security designs of its web payment platform to ensure adequate security for cardholders.With the chip and PIN technology on the platform, Ifedi assured cardholders in the country of the safety of their transactions.This, according to him, is aimed at increasing the confidence level of cardholders who shop online and improve the image of the country.In addition, Ifedi said other security measures put in place by the company ensured that merchants operating websites could not capture cardholders data, because if they are able to capture data of cardholders, it is an additional risk.He stated that the payment company had created four categories for online merchants, adding that the categories determined the level of trust each merchant could extend to online shoppers.For instance, he said a school was in a higher category of risk than an airline, while a shop had a higher category than a merchant selling airtime.There are categories that we have set to make sure that there are limits to what people can do. If you want to transact higher value, what you need to do is go to your bank and get a one-time password system so that the system can guarantee that you are the genuine owner of the card data, he said.According to him, Interswitchs web payment platform has been verified by Visa and that the implication is that all transactions on the platform are secure.Another security feature noticeable on the site to protect online retailers, Ifedi said, was the sign of a padlock to show that the site was secure.He said, Once you see that padlock on our site, you automatically know that anything you enter at that point is been encrypted online, real time all the way to your bank.So, nobody can break it in-between. This is the reason the company is certain that the level of security that exists online now is higher than before.He noted that should the card details of an online customer be stolen, the Verve card could not be cloned unlike before.A document obtained by our correspondent from the e-Payment Providers Association of Nigeria revealed that over 3.6 million web-based transactions were done by Nigerians between January and June 2010.The figure, according to e-Payment analysts, might have increased by 100 per cent in the second half of 2010 with the same level of growth expected to continue till the end of 2011 and beyond.Experts have also said that the increasing spate of cyber criminal activities poses serious threat to the nations economy.They note that the web portals and web-based applications of many public and private sector organisations, including banks, pension fund administrators and switching/electronic payment companies, are found vulnerable to cyber attacks due to inadequate security measures.They warn that if urgent measures are not taken by business and government organisations deploying web-based platforms for their operations, companies might soon be faced with high incidence of hacking, leading to loss of data critical to business life and loss of revenue.In view of this, experts expect Interswitch to be serious about its claim, adding that anything contrary would jeopardise the money of several millions of Nigerian cardholders.Cybercrime has increased considerably in recent years and the number of businesses falling victims have increased in geometric proportion.According to the 2011 Global Economic Crime Survey released by PwC, nearly half of all surveyed businesses reported some form of fraud in the past year, up by 10 per cent points since 2009.
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