Hope PSB hit by ₦6.5 billion cyberattack, seeks legal recourse for recovery

Hope PSB has begun recovering ₦6.5 billion fraudulently obtained from its banking platform in a cyber attack.

Hope Payment Service Bank, the self-described “premier digital-first bank in Nigeria,” has begun a legal process to recover ₦6.5 billion fraudulently obtained from its banking platform by unknown persons.

“On about July 15, 2024, there was unauthorised access to the Plaintiff’s banking platform, following which huge sums of money were transferred fraudulently from the plaintiff’s banking platform to certain beneficiaries’ accounts,” said an excerpt from a motion the company filed at a high court in Lagos and seen by TechCabal.

The fraudulently obtained sum was transferred to hundreds of accounts in commercial banks and neobanks. One bank executive said a few of the banks involved had begun to recover some of the money but declined to share exact figures.

Hope PSB declined to comment on any part of this story.

While Hope PSB reported the matter to the police on July 18, it did not disclose the mechanism of the fraud.

However, one person with direct knowledge of the matter told TechCabal the fintech was the target of a cyberattack but did not provide specifics. The company responded to the cyberattack by shutting down its banking infrastructure.

“It is better to have a downtime than to lose money,” that person said.

“This is the first time we have suffered an attack in five years, as we have a robust risk and compliance framework. Customer deposits are safe, and there was no risk transference,” a person close to the company told TechCabal.

As digital payments grow exponentially in Nigeria, bad actors target banks and fintech companies. While these companies invest in security, bad actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Financial institutions lost ₦3.007 billion to fraud in the first quarter of 2024 across 20,638 reported incidents, according to data from the NIBSS fraud industry report.