The Bank of Ghana has expressed worry over the increasing rate of card fraud and defalcation in the banking sector.

The Second Deputy Governor of the BoG, Dr Johnson Asiama, told the Graphic Business on the sidelines of the AB & David’s Crystal Ball Africa 2017 in Accra on February 15 that the central bank had "asked the banks to scale up their IT security infrastructures to ward off these risks.”

“We also want them to regularly review and upgrade their existing IT infrastructure, install stronger firewalls and acquire an ISO certified systems to secure their operations,” he added.

Cloned cheques

The incidence of cloned cheques increased by 62 per cent as of November 2016.

According to data from the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) in 2015, fraudsters attempted to cash more than GH¢923,883.86 million from the banks using 26 cloned cheques.

The fraudsters were able to successfully withdraw eight cloned cheques with the face value of GH¢88,623.54 million.

Out of the 26 cloned cheques presented to the banks to be cashed, 18 of the cheques with a face value of GH¢835,260.32 were detected and returned unpaid.

Dr Asiama said some of the suspects have so far been arrested.

The others, however, are at large.