How an ITU security lab advances trust in digital financial services

Digital financial services have expanded rapidly around the world, especially as mobile money innovations bring financial services to millions of people for the very first time.

This growth in opportunities to save, make payments and take loans, however, has been accompanied by increasingly sophisticated fraud and cybersecurity threats.

Mobile money fraud continues to rise, driven by attack vectors such as identity fraud, social engineering, insider threats, and SIM swaps, where attackers redirect someone else’s phone number to their own SIM card.

Mobile money users in developing countries are the group most affected by such attacks, highlighting the need for stronger security controls and proactive risk management globally.

Current trends reinforce the importance of equipping regulators with the tools and expertise to identify vulnerabilities and ensure effective mitigation.

Ongoing work by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and partners has helped make secure digital financial services a global reality, with an ITU lab initiative assisting growing numbers of developing countries with the practical aspects of digital financial service (DFS) security.

First, the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative (FIGI) ꟷ active from 2017 to 2021 ꟷ brought key regulatory, financial and telecom institutions together to accelerate digital financial inclusion, sparked by pioneering innovation in developing countries showing how mobile money could reach the unbanked.

FIGI provided an open framework for collaboration led by ITU, the World Bank Group, and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), with support from the Gates Foundation.

The World Bank and CPMI helped to build a strong understanding of the policy considerations surrounding digital identity while incentivizing the use of electronic payments.