Palmpay To Curb Fraud In $2bn Nigeria’s Betting Industry

PalmPay said it is curbing fraud in Nigeria’s betting industry, even as it called for the promotion of responsible gaming by stakeholders in the gaming industry.

Nigeria’s betting industry reached over $2 billion in 2020, with over 60 million Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 40 spending $5.5 million daily on betting, according to a 2023 report by the Orange Business Intelligence Technology (ORBIT).

With a population of over 200 million and expectations that in over ten years, the betting industry would generate up to $4.7 billion in annual revenue, create 10 million jobs and generate between 1.5-3% of GDP, PalmPay said, it offers customers of the biggest betting companies in Nigeria secure and safe payment gateways to fund their betting wallets and curb fraud.

To this end, the fintech platform recently signed up a strategic partnership with BetKing to promote responsible gaming in Nigeria, saying, exponential growth in the gaming industry in Africa, with a population of over 1.4 billion people, means that more Africans between the ages of 18 and 40 are at risk of fraud and other security risks associated with the gaming industry, saying, PalmPay’s multi-factor security authentication features can mitigate these risks.

Speaking at the Africa Gaming Expo in Lagos recently, on ‘the Role of Payment Providers in Facilitating Secured Transactions in the Gaming Industry,’ PalmPay’s head of Biller Business Development, Wayne Ruppel,spoke on what PalmPay was doing to raise awareness and protect gamers from potential fraud risks in the gaming industry.

“At PalmPay, our wallet is secure and has multi-factor security authentication features, including device-binding. This means there must be confirmation before a user logs into your account. When someone illegally tries to log into a user’s account, they will be required to identify themselves, including facial recognition.

“Also, among other security features and awareness programmes to promote responsible gaming, we run educational campaigns across our media channels to educate PalmPay users about the need to secure their wallets.

“Furthermore, we have optimised payout. Initially, people could create a betting account and use it to withdraw money into another betting account with a different name. With our name-binding feature, that is no longer possible. With this feature, the name on the account a user is withdrawing to must correspond with the name on the payout account,” Wayne said.