Understanding Fraud in Nigerian Banking: Channel Vulnerability, Social Engineering, and Temporal Patterns (2023)

This study focuses on analysing the fraud patterns in Nigerian banking using the Nigerian Bank Services Sector (NIBSS) Fraud Dataset (2023) comprising of 1 million transactions. Descriptive statistics, crosstabs, and Chi-square tests are used to examine channel vulnerability, fraud techniques and temporal patterns. Results indicate that the Web (0.340%), Mobile (0.333%) and POS (0.306%) channels have much higher fraud levels than the ATM (0.110%) channel with a statistically significant relationship between channel and fraud occurrence (χ² = 147.59, p < 0.001). Social Engineering became the most prevalent fraud method across all fraud channels, with the most prevalent across ATM (81.8%) and ECOM (72.4%). Temporal analysis showed that month is significant (χ² = 358.91, p < 0.001) as the highest fraud rates were found in January (0.53%) and May (0.49%) whilst weekend rates of fraud had an increase of 17.1% from weekdays. The study provides empirical evidence of fraud trends in developing economies and provides practical guidance for banks, regulators and customers on the investment of resources in security, customer awareness and education programs, and monitoring during high-risk periods. Future research should be carried on for more than one year, and advanced detection techniques should be explored.