Now Financial Institutions will be Held Responsible for Frauds in m-Banking

Mobile banking being the fundamental area globally is unfortunately still not gaining momentum in Pakistan due to fear of fraud and money loss. Now things are getting better as the government and State Bank of Pakistan is putting efforts to give rise to this internationally growing trend.

Also Read: PTA and SBP Launches Regulatory Framework for Mobile Banking Interoperability

Keeping in view the need to boost up financial inclusion, PTA recently framed regulations for m-banking. The increased mobile broadband penetration Pakistan can also provide good opportunity to speed-up digital banking in our country.

Now Financial Institutions will be Held Responsible for Frauds in m-Banking

Interesting news regarding these efforts include that now the authorized financial institutions (AFIs) will be held responsible for the financial losses and other  fraudulent activities in m-banking. This was declared by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) recently.

PTA said in the “Regulations for Technical Implementation of Mobile Banking, 2016″ that:

“AFI(s) shall be liable to their customers for any financial loss, fraudulent activities and its consequences thereof in accordance with the applicable laws.”

Regarding the role of third part, the regulator said that:

“Third-party service providers and telecom operators will maintain detailed technical transaction logs to enable processing of audit trails required to be reconstructed in the event of any disputes or supervisory concerns of the PTA and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), without compromising the confidentiality.”

Now PTA and SBP will be the sole authorities to resolve all fraud related activities in the country. Hence, both of them will be accessed by the disputed parties, AFIs, mobile operators and third-party service service providers.

For future developments it is announced that:

“PTA and SBP may constitute a joint committee to resolve the dispute. The decision taken by the committee shall be final and the same shall be abided by the parties in dispute. All telecom operators and third-party service providers will put in place an effective, comprehensive and efficient consumer complaint handling mechanism to safeguard the consumers against risks of fraud, loss of privacy and delays in service provisioning among others.

Hope so Pakistan will soon witness a boom in the field of “Mobile Banking” as now the government is also serious about the progress in financial inclusion.