Harnessing artificial intelligence to combat online payment fraud in Cameroon offers a transformative pathway to strengthen financial security, enhance real-time risk detection, and build greater trust in the country’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
By Yessom Nwotazeh Jones
Introduction
Cameroon incurred over 1 billion FCFA lost to online payment fraud in 2025. These losses resulted from the following scams; phishing through fake email, SMS or website impersonation, mobile money fraud through fake credit/debit alert, wrong transfer scam, WhatsApp impersonation, fake job/freelance payment scams, prize/lottery scams, fake social media vendors, SIM swap fraud, advance-fee fraud, account takeover and, Ponzi schemes. The losses incurred over the years shows an upward fraud trajectory with 2023 marked the peak of digital fraud in Cameroon. The fraud networks were well structured, evident of widespread Ponzi schemes. An estimated 7 billion FCFA lost to cyber-crime over a period from 2010 to 2023. The victims were individuals, businesses and, government agencies. Victims are tricked into providing their passwords, PIN, banking details, other personal information or exploit the trust relationship and demand urgent transfer. This results in financial hardship, stress, compromise of personal data and, disruption in business operations due to cyber-attacks. If not put under control, it will reduce public trust in state institutions. The aim of this paper is to sensitize the public, provide a way-forward to curb digital fraud and build public trust in Cameroon and Africa.
Government Intervention
Government crackdown on Ponzi schemes resulted to a reduction in fraud related losses in 2025. The government has promulgated into Law, a criminal act. Law N⁰ 2010/012 of 12 December 2010 on cyber criminality stipulates that criminal investigation of this nature shall be the sole responsibility of judicial police trained in digital forensics.
The National Agency for Information and Communication (ANTIC) in 2025 identified 59 scam platforms, shutdown 40. Also, 4781 fake social media accounts of which 3466 were blocked. 471 scam cases and 5973 vulnerable cases were identified. Despite these efforts, Antic faces inadequate skilled personnel to handle matters of digital forensics. However, the AI algorithm is holistic, can shut down all possible tactics by fraudsters and solve the personnel problem. This leads us to the importance of adopting AI into the regulatory system.
The Role of AI in Fraud Detection and Prevention
AI algorithms can handle the adaptive nature and scale of digital fraud. In Kenya, the banking and mobile money sector experienced significant reduction in fraud incidents after AI application. 65% of banks apply AI for credit risk scoring. For MPesa AI applied in real time fraud detection and risk scoring handles up to 12000 transactions per second.
AI changes the game from rule-based systems to AI algorithms that sort out irregular transaction patterns, detect account hacking attempts, predict phishing messages, detect the next move of fraud networks and prevent future fraud threats. AI can send warning signals alerting the user of potential fraud attack. In Nigeria, about 37% of Fintech apply AI to credit scoring and risk modeling, 62.5% use AI-powered chatbots for customer retentions.
However, the misuse of AI can enhance digital fraud by personalizing emails or SMS, deep fake and voice cloning attacks, by pass captcha and basic fraud detection systems, generate fraudulent accounts and creating malware to evade detection systems. Because AI can perform all this, only proves it understands how the system works and has the capacity to beat it.
Recommendations
Policy makers should adopt an AI framework for real – time transaction screening, update privacy and data protection policies, be transparent on who takes the fall for AI errors and, adopt AI cyber security measures for finance institutions.
- Government should build a single fraud database to secure data sharing.
- Equip ANTIC with centralized AI monitoring systems to ease fraud prediction.
- Banks and telecom providers should adopt real-time AI fraud monitoring to ease fraud detection.
- Adopt AI principles that focus on safeguarding and privacy in order to strengthen data protection.
Conclusion
Though AI misuse can enhance fraud, it remains the best technology to prevent online payment fraud and beat scammers at their own game. By adopting AI into the regulatory system, ANTIC will have the capacity to predict, securely share, detect, and prevent online fraud and threats. Without a robust sovereign AI fraud prevention framework, both public trust and digital sovereignty would be compromised.
