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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

INDEMNITY IN CASE MOBILE FUNDS GO TO A WRONG NUMBER

There are increasing cases of funds sent by Mobile Money going to a number which the sender had not intended to send the money to. The indemnity of the one who sent such money is not there at all. Once the money goes to a number by accident (as it is not the one the sender had wished to send the money to), the matter becomes one of negotiation!

It is therefore important that some form of indemnity is put in place which would require that the one sending the money that is the Mobile Money agent takes responsibility for funds lost or complete re-imbursement of the lump-some figure. This would require that the sender fills a form with a Phone number where the funds are intended to go, such that when the sender sends the money to different number, he/she is liable in case the funds are not recovered from the wrong recipient. There are two cases in point. In one, the sender sent shs 800,000 to a wrong recipient. The beneficiary got shs 300,000 for free, and sent the balance of shs 500,000 a net loss of shs 300,000! Another case involved shs 100,000. The wrong beneficiary settled for shs 30,000 before remitting the shs 70,000.

As a caution, those sending Mobile Money should first talk to the intended beneficiary, that way confirming the rightness of the number to which funds are to be remitted prior to remitting.

This is unacceptable. There must be better security for those sending money not to lose money to fake recipients.

William Kituuka Kiwanuka

1 comment:

  1. If the mobile money agent is acting on the instructions of the sender, why should they undertake to indemnify the sender for monies sent to the wrong number?
    The aforementioned notwithstanding, what is the percentage of cases where the agent has gotten it wrong in comparison to when the sender messes up the digits? My experience is that the former is far less than the latter and if this is the case a provision on indemnity would be redundant

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