June 07, (THEWILL) – The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has queried Wema Bank Plc over alledged illegal banking practices. Having kept mute for days, after being publicly accused of some wrong practices – using customer’s accounts, the agency was forced to call out the old generation bank, to address the general public on what it was alledged to be doing with some of its customers’ accounts without their authorisation.
The agency insisted that the issue had gone beyond asking victims to send a direct message to their social media account to secretly tackle the issue, but to come clean. There have been allegations that the bank, via its online banking application, ALAT, and its agents have been opening unauthorised accounts for customers with information sourced from their Bank Verification Number (BVN) details.
Some victims, who are not customers of the bank, complained of getting emails linked to their BVN from the bank, One Time Passwords and the likes, all of which are considered a violation of data rights and therefore, suggesting that something fraudulent was going on.
The floodgate of complaints from victims was opened by a mental health advocate, who goes by the name Adebayo Tayo. He lamented that he never knew he had a Wema Bank account until his mother contacted him because she received an alert that was intended for him.
In response to the report, the bank claimed that the unauthorised accounts were opened for certain persons in a bid to celebrate with the banking application’s fifth anniversary, despite not informing them ahead or receiving approval to create the accounts.
In these perilous times where individual’s bank accounts are sometimes wiped clean by internet fraudsters, it only makes sense for the management of Wema Bank to address the issue and exonerate the bank and its staff of any fraudulent activity. As at the time of filing in this report, Wema bank was yet to publicly address the matter.
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