Customers accuse Wema of using their data to open illegal accounts

Some customers of Wema Bank Plc have accused the lender of conducting illegal banking practice in the country by using their data to open illegal accounts without their permission.

It was alleged that the bank has been opening accounts for some Nigerians on its digital banking platform, ALAT, without their knowledge or consent in a bid to celebrate its 5th anniversary.

While the actual number of unauthorized accounts opened on behalf of unsuspecting Nigerians is unknown, Wema Bank was aiming to achieve “a million accounts in one day”.

Wema Bank, in a letter, claimed the unauthorized accounts were opened for certain persons “to celebrate with us” despite not informing them ahead or receiving approval to create the accounts.

Wema Bank is expected to also place a financial burden on the unsuspecting persons through account maintenance cost, from which the lender generated about N2.10 million last year, surpassing N1.24 million by 2020.

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Adebayo Tayo, a mental health advocate, took to his Twitter account to publicly accuse Wema Bank of opening an account in his name without authorisation from him.

Tayo lamented that he never knew he had a new Wema Bank account until his mother contacted him, because she received an alert that was intended for him – shocking, how come he owns an account he’s unaware of, and his mom receives the alert.

“I am concerned about how my info has been used by Wema Bank and I need detailed explanations about the account including every transaction it has performed before someone uses my details for an account to launder money or collect ransome, ” he stated.

Another affected Nigerian is Oyenike Ojo, whose name was used to open an account. However, when money was sent to the account, the alert details showed another name, Oluseyi Bamgboyi as account owner – which means two different names seem to have been used to open one account.

Ojo’s husband said something shady about the account, “What I said is, the current name on the account number in my screenshots is not my wife’s name. If you look at that screenshot, the account was opened with my wife’s name and a new account number.

“She also got a credit alert notification via sms with the new account number. This shows that her details were used to open that account. However I tried to do a transfer to that account this morning when I read the news only to see that the account name is Oluseyi Bamgboye and not Oyenike Ojo (which is my wife’s name). Something is definitely fishy”, he explained.

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Ojo said his wife has an account with Wema Bank which she hasn’t used for about seven years, and the new account created in her name doesn’t seem to carry the same number with her old account.