European tech firms Evina and Telecoming believe Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) to be the safest and most suitable payment technology for the new mobile economy.

The two companies have entered into an alliance to drive the technology in various countries in Africa to help combat fraud.

Paris-based anti-fraud company Evina and DCB specialist Telecoming have signed a global alliance to promote DCB and believe it deals a body blow to mobile fraud that cost Africa over US$4-billion in 2020 and is predicted to cost over US$5-billion in 2021.

They assert that DCB is the most suitable for millions of unbanked Africans.

The alliance wants to showcase the value of DCB via a DCBMaster service that allows users to measure their exposure to fraud, as well as their market and regulations knowledge.

They also plan to launch the first global DCB indicator, an index that will measure the maturity of the DCB market in different regions, based on the analysis of four indicators: fraud protection, innovation, penetration in the digital industry and growth potential.

Roberto Monge, COO of Telecoming, said: "Direct carrier billing has been growing in the new digital economy. It is a technology with enormous potential that benefits all players in the mobile environment. With this alliance, we want to place DCB at the forefront of the payments industry and reinforce our commitment to the development of a transparent, secure and stable mobile economy.”

David Lotfi, Evina’s CEO, stated: “The potential of DCB is widely underestimated by mobile operators and other market players. This is mainly due to the fact that DCB is currently adversely affected by fraud. By protecting the mobile payment ecosystem, we aim to sustain DCB’s growth and help all players flourish in this ecosystem.”

In November 2020 Evina identified the top five African and Middle Eastern countries where mobile fraud is most prevalent as Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Jordan and Oman.

The percentage of mobile-based billing transactions in each country that have been identified as suspect by Evina’s network of fraud sensors are 51%, 30%, 20%, 18% and 10%, respectively.

Lotfi explained that mobile payment is being impacted by two primary forms of mobile fraud.

“Today clickjacking and malicious app are the two most common forms of mobile fraud. Through the clickjacking technique, a fraudster intercepts a legitimate click and unknowingly directs the user to a website where sensitive financial and other details can be stolen. Malicious apps are trickier, these apps have been injected with malware during a disguised app update or right from the start when the user unwittingly downloads the app from the app store, with the same purpose of defrauding the user.”