Online savings and investment platform Cowrywise has been accused of paying negligence to request for the refund of ‘a few million naira’ which a woman named Funmi Oyatogun on Twitter claimed was stolen from her account with the company.
Oyatogun who describes herself as one who designs travel experiences said on Friday that Cowrywise had traced the origin of the said theft but had not acted on it.
“A few million Naira was stolen from my @cowrywise stash (if it happened to me, it can happen to anyone). Cowrywise has traced the origin of the theft and have the details of the thieves. I was also promised that I will get my money back. I have not gotten it back,” she wrote.
“It is one thing that my money was insecure. Note, following my incident and at my recommendation, Cowrywise has since disabled external transfers on Stash.
“It is another thing that the leadership does not prioritize reimbursements of obvious theft and then chasing the back end.”
Oyatogun added: “Also, I don’t think Cowrywise is a fraud. Far from it. What I know is that my money was stolen from their platform and they did not refund it to me, months later. Instead, they are still working on it. My money was stolen from a platform I trusted. I want it back. That’s all.”
In response, Cowrywise said “…Cowrywise takes the issue of security seriously. In our 3 years, we have never experienced fraud on Customer funds. Nobody can access your account without your password and pin. And we advise our customers not to give out their credentials.
“For users that have their emails compromised, we advise them to reach out to us immediately so we can block their account. Unfortunately in this case, we were notified after 2 weeks.
“As shared with you earlier, the delay in resolving the issue is because the bank doesn’t consider one of the recipient accounts as fraudulent. Hence the need for a court order to effect the reversal.”
The incident has sparked fears among users of the platform including those of its competitor Piggyvest.
