In this edition, we we able to get valuable insights into the industry from:

• Petra Mejas, Commercial Director at Mondia Pay
• Jasper Beelen, Head of Product Mobile at Creative Clicks
• Gaby Bosch, CEO at Content For Mobile

Quick Talk with Petra Mejas from Mondia Pay

Mondia Pay’s Commercial Director underscores the expansive opportunities of DCB in Europe. Petras points out its accessibility to both young and elderly users without credit cards, solidifying DCB’s position as a preferred payment option.

Quick Talk with Jasper Beelen from Creative Clicks

Creative Clicks’ Head of Product Mobile highlights the need for unique premium offerings in the competitive European landscape. Beelen also sheds light on the pivotal role partnerships, like the one with Evina, play in unlocking new markets and enhancing DCB’s security.

Quick Talk with Gaby Bosch from Content For Mobile (CFM)

Content For Mobile’s CEO touches upon significant European DCB trends, notably the focus of operators on fraud prevention and the inclination towards top-tier gaming products. Bosch contrasts the subscription habits of Middle Eastern consumers, who might juggle multiple subscriptions with Europeans, who exhibit a selective subscription approach.

If you’re a DCB executive interested in sharing your DCB and mobile payments insights at the next event featuring Evina, please contact us at communication@evina.com.

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The Global Carrier Billing Payment Summit is an annual gathering of leaders in carrier billing and mobile payments to analyze the current mobile payments ecosystem and forecast future industry trends. For more information about the event, check out the official GCB and Mobile Payments Summit website. 

Experience the power of AI-powered cybersecurity for carrier billing at our booth

During the event we’ll be at booth #3, ready to showcase our award-winning anti-fraud solutions to help you secure and optimize your carrier billing strategies. This event presents a golden opportunity to discuss with Evina how AI and human expertise can work together to combat fraud and fully secure carrier billing flows for mobile operators, payment aggregators and forward-thinking merchants. 

Don’t Miss Out: Book a Meeting with the Evina team

Stay Tuned for Our Keynote Address

In addition to our stand, we’re delighted to announce Evina’s CEO, David Lotfi, will be giving a keynote speech on the lessons he has learned from his many years of experience in the Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) industry. This keynote will take place on the 19th of September at 10:10 a.m. on the main stage.

The 19th and 20th of September are set to be eventful days, so mark your calendars and make sure to schedule a meeting with us! Join the DCB and mobile payments conversation at the GCBSUMMIT 2023.

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In this edition, we we able to get valuable insights into the industry from:

• Mohamed Benhamadi, Managing Director & Business Development at Telecoming
• Rami Dahabreh, Director of Business Development at Sam Media
• Mark Robinson, CEO at Infomedia

Quick Talk with Mohamed Benhamadi from Telecoming

Telecoming’s Managing Director & Business Development underscores the pivotal impact of content localization in the dynamic Middle East region.

Quick Talk with Rami Dahabreh from Sam Media

Sam Media’s Director of Business Development highlights the importance of clearly defining the unique value mobile payment companies can offer when entering a new market like the Middle East.

Quick Talk with Mark Robinson from Infomedia

Infomedia’s CEO advocates for product-market fit, which entails aligning offerings with the specific needs of users and partners and services as the cornerstone of success.

If you’re a DCB executive interested in sharing your DCB and mobile payments insights at the next event featuring Evina, please contact us at communication@evina.com.

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Mobile money has become an integral part of daily life in many parts of the world. The convenience and ease of use offered by mobile money systems have fundamentally changed how people manage their finances, pay bills and even receive income. The industry is a rapidly growing with over 1.35 billion registered accounts processing $1 trillion in transactions annually, according to the GSMA’s State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2022. 

However, this positive momentum is now threatened by fraud. Cybercriminals are constantly finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities in mobile money systems, resulting in significant financial losses for businesses and a loss of user trust. Evina research shows that 73% of defrauded mobile money users reduce their usage and 21% churn after being defrauded.

In this article, we will take a closer look at two common fraud techniques used by cybercriminals and the financial impact on mobile money businesses.

The common fraud techniques on mobile money and their financial impact

Commission fraud is a common tactic used by dishonest agents to inflate the commissions paid to them by mobile operators. This is achieved by manipulating the system and creating fake transactions.

The cost of commission fraud to a mobile money provider can be up to 4% of its annual revenue.

Phishing is another common technique used by cybercriminals to steal sensitive information and generate unwanted mobile money transactions. This is done by tricking a user into revealing sensitive information through convincing phone calls or messages.

The cost of phishing to a mobile operator can be up to 3.8% of its annual revenue.

MobileMoneyProtect: The solution against mobile money fraud 

The consequences of these fraud techniques have a significant impact on the entire mobile money ecosystem. Not only do they affect the user directly, but they also harm the mobile operator’s brand image and lead to reduced mobile money usage. Evina has developed a sophisticated mobile money solution to combat even the most complex fraud patterns: MobileMoneyProtect. The mobile money solution enables mobile operators and mobile money services to stop cybercriminals from stealing from, protect their users and grow their mobile money businesses. 

To learn more about MobileMoneyProtect, check out the solution here or contact one of our team members. 

The post Protecting Your Mobile Money Business from Fraud: An In-depth Look at Common Fraud Techniques and Their Significant Impact on Revenue appeared first on Evina.

According to the results of the DCB Index, South Africa is the leading country in the ranking, with the highest score (3.4 out of 5). In the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco and the UAE stand out, surpassing last year’s leader, Bahrain. Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo also rank highly, with 3.1 and 3.0 respectively.

DCB has proven to be a powerful payment tool in the MEA region, and the overall fraud prevention of mobile players has increased by 0.2 compared to 2021, showing a collective willingness to safeguard this technology. DCB has the potential to become even more powerful than credit cards, and mobile operators have all the advantages to elevate DCB and become major fintech companies. However, it is important that businesses protect DCB with the right cybersecurity solutions.

The DCB Index is intended to provide mobile players with an overview of the development of DCB in the MEA region, helping them to better understand how to improve their business in their own country or what conditions to consider when deploying in other countries. 

The post DCB Index 2022: Insights into the Direct Carrier Billing Market in the Middle East and Africa appeared first on Evina.

Can you tell us more about where the malware hides?

The malware is hidden in a messaging app named Symoo on the Google Play Store.

It’s available worldwide, but the app has been downloaded the most by users in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Algeria and Nepal. 

You won’t find the app anymore on the Google Play Store however, as it’s been removed following our press release.

The malware steals phone numbers from users, how exactly does it do that?  

So the first thing to understand is that the infected app Symoo masquerades as a legitimate messaging app to impersonate users and create fake social media accounts.

It starts out with a user that finds the app on the app store, downloads it, and when it opens the infected app, the first thing that pops up is the app’s request to get the user’s phone number. 

When the user launchers the app, a loading screen appears and in the meantime, the app has launched a malicious program in the background that sends the user’s phone number to an external server and intercepts all SMS messages. 

This external server is used by a marketplace that collects the stolen phone number and reads the SMS messages linked to this number to obtain one-time codes that allow to create fake social media accounts. Millions of fake accounts on popular social networks like Facebook or Telegram are created this way and individuals can purchase these fake account directly from this platform to remain anonymous while potentially perpetrating criminal actions. 

What has been the malware’s impact up to now?

All users that have downloaded the infected app and entered their phone number are victims of the malware. These users now have fake social media profiles linked to their phone number and they aren’t aware. In India, there are 100K victims, in Pakistan 9K, in Algeria 3K and in Morocco 1K.

For more information, read the full press release.

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Jamil Gaith: DCBprotect was giving us great results. It improved our brand image, got us 12 new partners thanks to reinforced partner trust and helped us expand our carrier billing business. Still, we noticed plenty of room for improvement by switching from webview to a fully native app customer experience. With DCBprotect, the protection required to show a page, so a small redirection within the app to acquire the user, and we needed this process to be frictionless while maintaining the best security level.

David Lotfi: This request brought the DCB experts at Evina and Mobile Arts to set up a clear timeline to develop an in-app native version of DCBprotect. This meant creating a cybersecurity version of the solution powered by the same cutting-edge technology as DCBprotect, but integrated into a native SDK. In just 5 months, DCBprotect in-app was developed and brought to full use. How do you feel DCBprotect in-app has already started to benefit the development of the Mobibox platform? 

Jamil Gaith: The first visible significant benefit is the stellar user experience delivered to Mobibox subscribers with the cybersecurity technology integrated into the SDK solution while maintaining the same high levels of security against fraud attempts on DCB transactions. MobiBox SDK is now offered to all kinds of mobile content merchants.    

Evina created the first and only cybersecurity solution for DCB transactions in-app native on the market, out of a client request.  This shows how Evina is on top of technology and client service, so much so as to adapt its technology to the specific needs of Mobile Arts in record time. DCBprotect in-app has allowed us to keep our business as safe as possible without compromising user experience and our business goals.”

David Lotfi: We’re thrilled with the results and can’t wait to see how our strategic partnership will continue to protect your patterns in the best way possible. What we have found very interesting during the development process of In-App Protect, is the large number of DCB transactions that happen inside apps and the information we can capture to create an even more secure experience. Detecting these transactions requires highly technical expertise, which is exactly why Evina has developed this first solution for in-app detection. Today DCBprotect in-app is supported by both Android and iOS apps.

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I am a telecom engineer. At the very beginning of my career, I interned at a Parisian startup that sold services via DCB, stayed there for a while, worked my way up and soon became the CTO. In 2013, particularly pernicious fraud schemes started to appear on the market, which had a strong impact on our business. With my team at the time, I developed a dedicated anti-fraud solution. This project was a great success and soon several MNOs asked me if they could use my solution as they realized that only our DCB services didn’t generate any complaints. I was convinced that it needed to be developed further because cybersecurity had become a necessity to ensure longevity of the DCB payment world. I bought full ownership of the technology and founded Evina with those who had helped me make this disruptive technology a reality.

2. Carrier billing is a promising industry, but very often it develops under the radar of the start-up world and VCs. You have recently raised more than 20 million euros from an American VC. How did you get their attention?

Forward-thinking VCs understand the advantages that DCB has over other payment methods and that in a competitive environment, betting on DCB makes a lot of sense. DCB is a payment method that offers conversion rates up to 10 times higher than that of credit cards, allows seamless payment flows and ensures a particularly high level of user data protection. The only missing piece in many parts of the world is cybersecurity though. 

The first action that truly allows DCB to flourish in regions where DCB is booming is always cybersecurity. We are fortunate to have partnered with a fund that is perfectly aligned with our vision: DCB will become one of the main payment methods of the future and its extreme security will make this possible. This is a great sign for the whole ecosystem of a bright future.

3. You’ve now been working in the DCB industry for more than 15 years. What are the key changes in the industry you’ve seen over the years?

This experience allowed me to personally experience the first golden age of DCB and then the eruption of fraud. This era created a real movement of solidarity and collaboration between the players in the sector. We’ve seen operators join forces to create best practices and set up self-regulation systems for the sector through the creation of professional associations. We have seen the emergence of working groups on cybersecurity issues in the DCB etc. Whilst all this is a positive step, I believe this isn’t enough. A lot more needs to be done.

A real polarization of the sector between those players who are betting on DCB and its full security through both regulatory framework and technical means and those who rely on the regulatory framework alone has emerged. This is true at both the operator and country level. The operators who gain the most market share are those who invest and secure their payment methods by using state-of-the-art technology, and the countries where DCB is most successful are the countries where it is best protected.

4. Why have the regulatory efforts and the self-discipline of the industry players not been enough to stop the fraud? 

Because we are talking about a technology area for which the law or best practice recommendations alone can only be expected to provide a partial solution. Fraud has become automated and cybercriminals have rapidly developed new forms of attacks, by hacking DCB using advanced malware.  It’s therefore necessary to provide a technological solution capable of adapting continuously and enforcing regulations. This means significant and ongoing investments over a period of  years to be able to identify new forms of fraud and to stop them in their tracks.

5. What is the real impact on players who are not fully aware of this technical fraud? 

The most immediate impact is the limitation of the activity. Many players have simply limited their DCB activity and have implemented more restrictive rules concerning their partners or the use of technology. This limits the universality of DCB payments and makes them progressively less competitive. The worst thing is of course that the lengthening of payment flows, the introduction of One-Time Passwords, and other restrictions cannot stop fraud, but it does drastically limit the activity. In most cases, growth is limited and the company stagnates trying to cope with the fraud. In the long run, the main risk is to be forced into shutting down, at least temporarily, because of a major attack. 

6. What are the players with the highest growth and profitability in DCB  doing to succeed?

They work on these basic fundamentals: conversion rates, end-user satisfaction, latency, and the quality of the partners they work with. 

The ideal for the consumer is to pay in one click on an optimized merchant site, and with complete peace of mind.

To achieve this ideal, the best players trust their partners to build the most optimal payment paths, they take full advantage of all DCB has to offer and attract partners that are particularly valued by the end user. To do this, they invest in the right technology solutions that allow them to trust their partners and control their business. And this is what a great cybersecurity solution can offer, capable of tracking the entire sales funnel, having total visibility of the flows and stopping cybercriminal attacks. 

The future of DCB is bright and we’ve reached unprecedented levels of satisfaction with our customers. And this is just the beginning for our industry. Juniper Research estimates that the market will reach nearly $100 billion by 2026, with the most secure players capturing a majority share of that pie. And by protecting themselves, they will grow the DCB market well beyond that level. 

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