Bank customer service operations taken over by scammers on social media

Apart from delivering better service and connecting more with their customers, the decision of major financial institutions to move customer engagements from the banking halls to social media was also necessary to reach the majority of the bank customers who have decided to operate more via banking apps and other cashless and virtual platforms.

Checks from various sources revealed that the loophole was created with the failure of the banks to swiftly attend to complaints and challenges made via these social media channels.

Over the years, customers have fallen victim to fraudulent handles masquerading as the main handles for these banks.

These scam accounts prey on innocent victims who throng these channels to lay complaints and immediately approach them with ‘solutions’.

They go ahead to request the victim to chat with them via Whatsapp or click on a link and once they get the victim's attention, they proceed to present some fraudulent schemes to the customer who eventually falls victim if he is not observant.

1) It is important to note that reputable financial institutions on social media are always verified.

Verification means the handle has a ‘mark’ which confirms it as the authentic handle for the entity in question.

On Twitter, the handle may have a tick after the username, Facebook also gives a tick to these known handles.

2) Another factor to consider is the number of followers the account has.

A 2021 data review by Nairametrics revealed that GTBank, Zenith Bank, UBA, First Bank and Access Bank were the top five Nigerian banks with the most followers on social media.

With these figures from the top five Nigerian banks on social media, it is however disturbing that a handle with just five to 100 followers will successfully scam a customer.

It is, therefore, important to check and confirm the followers the handle currently has before going ahead to engage such accounts on social media.