Kenya’s largest telecommunication service provider, Safaricom, is in the process of developing a framework that will deal with the sim card swap fraud. Safaricom is planning to layout infrastructure consisting of finger print biometrics while being keen on sim card-swap alerts, where the customer agents will call the user for confirmation on the swap. This comes after ongoing sim card fraud that plagued users in the country in recent months.
Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said that such incidents, the most recent of which resulted in the arrest of 22 suspects, including some Safaricom staff, calls for “more technical solutions.”
“We’ve assessed people quite carefully. It is only that some come in clean then become corrupted,” he said, “We are looking at introducing biometrics for SIM swaps. Meanwhile, if you want to do SIM swaps and the line is active, we will send a message with a request and you will have to confirm the request for the swap,” he added.
Last month the Director of Criminal investigations (DCI) arrested two suspects and seized 2160 unused Safaricom sim card and 3 M-pesa Safaricom booklets.
“We are happy that we are tackling this issue in a multi-faceted way right from the company, the Government, law enforcement and the media for flagging the issue making the public aware.” Steve Chege Director Corporate Affairs Safaricom.
Last year the telecom introduced ‘Jitambulishe’, the voice biometric system which allows customers to access services such as resetting of their M-Pesa PIN and PUK requests through a faster and timeless vetting process. The process previously involved speaking to a Safaricom agent or taking a number of steps before getting the much-needed service.
“Once we are ready we will come up with a process where customers will give additional information, right from when the customer buys a sim-card. This narrows down the opportunity for someone swap your sim without your involvement.” added Steve
He however did not disclose the project timelines as well as technology companies involved in development and roll out of the service.
