Why fraud intelligence sharing is Africa's next line of defense
Most fraud today starts with a compromised identity, a stolen credential, or someone on the inside who opens the door.
The scale of the shift is already visible in the numbers. Fraud losses in Nigeria fell by roughly 50% between 2024 and 2025, a drop NIBSS attributes largely to collaboration between banks. In one Incode pilot across six banks and more than 400,000 sessions, connecting signals across sessions caught 19% additional fraud that single-session checks missed.
These trends point to the same structural gap everywhere. A blocklist only reacts once fraud is already confirmed, blocking one account without asking what else that device, location, or network touched.
One central theme from Incode's webinar Beyond the blocklist was that the data needed to catch fraud earlier is usually already sitting inside the organization, unused. Device IDs, geolocation, and cross-session patterns routinely surface fraud rings that single-point checks miss entirely.
So how should banks, fintechs, and payment companies across Africa close that gap, and what does real cross-institution collaboration require? The conversation explored exactly that.
Speakers
- Oluwatosin Obadimu, Fraud Desk Manager, NIBSS (Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System)
- Aurelien Alexandre, Solutions Architect, Incode
- Deji Amund, Head of Africa Growth and Strategic Partnerships, Incode (Moderator)
Fraud intelligence sharing was built on a simple idea: if one institution sees the risk, it should be able to warn the rest before the money moves. Africa's payment rails are already fast enough to make that urgent.
By combining device intelligence, location signals, and cross-session pattern detection into a single view, institutions can catch fraud that a single transaction, or a single blocklist entry, would never reveal.
The fraud is already moving faster than any one institution can track alone. The frameworks to share intelligence safely exist. The only question is whether your organization is ready to use them.