Bizum has changed our way of making payments. And now we use this application for almost everything: paying an amount in a store or dividing the cost of a meal between friends. It is the most popular payment service provider in our country, but there are alternatives to carry out this type of operation that are more popular in other parts of the world. For example, Yape, the most used in Peru; Nequi, widely used in Colombia; or See yourself.
Although these applications are quite safe, none of them is free from cybercriminals and scams. In countries like Colombia and Peru, there has been an increase in the number of scams over the last year, according to Rest of World. Scammers are using makeshift apps to create fake receipts, which they present to justify the transaction and get out of making the payment.
It should be remembered that providers often rely on customer screenshots of app-generated receipts to confirm payment, because many apps don't always notify users when they're paid. But this license opens the door to easy scams for cybercriminals.
This scam is suffered by users of Yape, Nequi and Daviplata, who have not offered figures on the scope of these fraudulent operations. However, Brandon Omar Córdova, Yape's social media advisor, assured this outlet that his team receives up to thirty reports a day about possible scams.
In the absence of official records, social networks have been filled with warnings and information about these scams. We will find numerous testimonials if we search for "fake Yape" or "fake Nequi" on social networks such as Facebook, a way to warn other users of this practice.
They tried to deceive Johana Blanco, a worker in a kitchen company. She received an image via WhatsApp last year. She was a receipt supposedly generated by Yape, the most popular mobile payment app in Peru. The replica did not lack the smallest detail: name, date, time, amount paid and full name of the payer. But, when reviewing her account, she found that she had not made any payment. It was a relatively small amount, but the scammer wanted to get away with not paying for a meal.
Despite warnings from payment providers, avoiding this type of scam is difficult, because the use of these applications is increasing in countries like Colombia and Peru. According to this medium, the use of mobile wallets grew by 75% during 2020 in the latter country; while Colombia experienced a 99% increase between 2020 and 2021.
Yape is becoming more and more popular in Peru. In less than three years, it has gone from two million users to around nine, almost 30% of the country's population. In Colombia, two of the country's largest banks, Davivienda and Bancolombia, have launched their own apps, Daviplata and Nequi, respectively, which now have approximately 14 million users each. The combined users of this bank add up to more than half of the country's population.
