Interswitch Pioneers Card Transaction Control with Wema Card Control

Africa’s fastest growing technology company, Interswitch Transnational has announced the launch of an innovative new solution for setting card transaction permissions and controlling transaction types and amounts. Known as ‘Transaction Control’, this revolutionary solution from Interswitch is a card based anti-fraud solution that automatically locks down a bank’s issued cards based on preset criteria.

The fully customizable solution comes with predefined card permissions and allows for a variety of permissions to be set and activated in accordance with the wishes of the card issuer and the cardholder. It works across the major debit and credit card platforms operational in Nigeria today (Verve, Mastercard and Visa) and already existing cards can be enabled to make use of the solution without any need for reissue.

Shedding insight on the rationale behind Card Transaction Control, Head Products & Innovation at Interswitch, Inalegwu Alogwu remarked, “Card Transaction Control is one of the many ways we continue to respond to the needs of our customers and partners intuitively. We understand the need to create solutions that are relevant and specific to the business environment we all operate in and so it was important for us to create a way to enable Nigerian cardholders take control of their own transaction security in a way that is customizable and easy to use. Card Transaction Control improves the relationship between cardholders and card issuers by bringing the experience under the control of the user, which is important all over the world, but particularly here in Nigeria. This is one of the key ways through which we are delivering the experience of Intuitive Exchange.”

The solution has already been adopted by Wema Bank where it is known as Wema Card Control. Wema Bank users are able to make use of Wema Card Control using the updated WemaMobile Banking Suite or the SMS short code 33352.

Speaking about Transaction Control, Dele Adeyinka, Head of E-business, Wema bank remarked,

“Wema Card Control, which went live on December 21, 2015 enables you to disable your cards from being used on any electronic platform to protect your funds from theft and fraud. The advantages of this solution are numerous to us and to our customers. First of all, we have measurable fraud savings as we are able to put a figure on how much we have saved from potentially fraudulent transactions. It is also a highly convenient solution with almost no 
impact on transaction processing time, and it reduces the time spent by bank staff investigating fraud. There is also a shared fraud liability with cardholders and an improved customer experience as it actively puts the control of personal cards in the hands of the cardholder. Best of all it works across all channels so it is available on all bank issued cards.”