A Nigerian court has granted Nigerian fintech giant Flutterwave the permission to reclaim ₦19 billion lost in unauthorised transactions through Point-of-Sale (POS) devices.
About 6,000 accounts across 35 banks and financial institutions are affected.
This development comes after a months-long investigation into a technical glitch that led to the fraudulent funds transfers.
The Mareva injunction was granted on February 1, Tech Cabal reported.
Flutterwave maintains that no customer funds were directly compromised, noting that the merchants involved were not entitled to the transferred funds and refused to return them.
“In 2023, we discovered that certain POS device merchants abused their access by conducting unauthorised transactions. In response to this, we temporarily suspended the accounts where funds were improperly transferred,” Flutterwave said.
“The merchants listed did not provide any service to our client and were not entitled to funds that were erroneously transferred and have continued to keep said funds.”
“We continue to actively engage with the relevant authorities to investigate and address the situation,” Flutterwave added.
An earlier court order placed debit restrictions on those accounts two months after the incident occurred.
This legal order enables Flutterwave to freeze assets and recover funds from the identified accounts, even if the merchants have already spent the disputed money.
Flutterwave added that to facilitate the recovery process, the court also mandated 35 financial institutions to share account holders’ information, like email addresses and phone numbers.
