Earlier in the week, MTN together with Airtel and Stanbic Bank issued a joint statement regarding the temporary suspension of Bank to Wallet transactions. This was after a security breach at a third-party service provider, whom we later learned to be Pegasus Technologies.
Pegasus Technologies is a payments integrator and powers payments between most banks and telecoms in the country which includes all the three affected parties. MTN Uganda has since gone on record to assure its customers of the safety of their wallets in a statement from the CEO below.
Related: Why Bank to Mobile Money Transfers are Down for Stanbic Customers on MTN and Airtel
MTN Uganda provides select mobile money services aggregated or integrated through third parties. On 3 October 2020, an aggregator, Pegasus Technologies Ltd experienced a security breach that impacted Bank 2 Wallet transfers. Although the incident did not affect any customer money mobile balances, a limited number of other services aggregated through the third-party provider were suspended as a precautionary safety measure. The core MTN Mobile Money services namely cash deposits, withdrawals, Person to Person (P2P) transactions, and MoMo payments were never affected nor compromised at any stage.
Investigations led by the Uganda Police Force are ongoing to identify the root cause of the incident. MTN is confident that the Uganda Police Force will conclude their investigations timeously and take appropriate action against the culprits.
The MTN mobile money platform complies with the highest international ICT security standards and is subjected to regular assessments and reviews by internal and external assurance providers. In a press release, MTN Uganda has come out to apologize to his customers and said;
We apologize to all our customers for any inconvenience and reassure the public that MTN Mobile money services are safe, convenient, and transparent.
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