South Africa’s mobile content and applications industry is steadily winning the war against fraudsters attempting to target local cellular users with unauthorised micro-billing.
This was communicated to an assembled gathering of the world’s leading players in direct carrier billing (DCB) at the recent World Telemedia Conference in Marbella who agreed SA’s mobile fraud prevention measures were world-class.
Speaking on the pop-up streaming channel of the globe’s only dedicated mobile commercialisation and payments annual event, Jacqui Jones of Johannesburg-based WorldPlay Mobile Solutions was upbeat in her assessment of wireless industry fraud mitigation measures in South Africa, and communicated her optimism about the future of the industry.
“From clickjacking to ransomware and malware, different types of mobile fraud are attempted by criminal syndicates at different points in the mobile value-added services (MVAS) ecosystem, as with other types of digital payments,” she says. “This makes collaboration and total adherence to fraud prevention measures by every local wireless application service provider (WASP) so crucial.
“There can be no weak links in the MVAS value chain or the mobile consumer suffers and so too does the long-term sustainability of the WASP industry,” Jones adds. “Fortunately, South Africa appears to be in better shape compared to many European and most world mobile content and applications markets and I’d put this down to the formation of the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association (WASPA) of South Africa as far back at 2004, as well as the willingness of WASPA members to work together and make some tough decisions by steadfastly enforcing certain basic policies that were good for the industry.”
Local players have successfully used WASPA as an effective tool to enforce key fraud prevention policies in South Africa. “Although it is commendable the industry has worked together to restore consumer confidence a lot more work needs to be done and we cannot rest on our laurels,” says Jones.