Security Gaps in the Mobile Money System in Rwanda: Challenges, Risks and Mitigation

With the increase in the number of mobile money users and the rise of mobile money transactions over time, underlying security flaws have been noted in mobile money services operations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the primary security weaknesses in Rwanda’s mobile money services, the challenges, as well as the risks involved. We collected data through administering an online questionnaire, filled by 30 registered mobile money (MM) users. We interviewed a registered MM agent. The collected data were analyzed using Python where there is a 93% correlation between an increase in number of users and mobile wallet fraud. The findings revealed that the key issues include SMishing attack, identity theft, phishing attack and authentication attack. Use of active user education campaigns and regular agent training, better access controls, use of 2FA, stringent laws against fraudsters, transaction monitoring by the ISP are some of our proposed mitigation measures. This study, therefore, will contribute to the literature on gaps in mobile money wallets in Rwanda and give suggestions to relevant decision makers to make amendments in the mobile wallet security infrastructure.