Equity Bank sued over thin SIM cards

Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi. A lawyer wants the court to stop the bank frm rolling out the thin sim technology. [PHOTO: FILE]

NAIROBI, KENYA: The battle over Equity’s thin Sim technology is now being waged in the courts after a lawyer filed a petition to stop its roll-out.

Bernard Murage, who says he is an account holder with the bank, wants the High Court to stop Equity Bank’s wholly owned subsidiary Finserve Africa from disseminating the Sim cards on a trial basis until the matter is determined.

In a certificate of urgency before High Court judge Mumbi Ngugi, Murage argued that he fears losing his personal data in the event the technology introduced by the financial institution starts operating.

“The basis of the urgency of this matter is founded on the fact that Finserve Africa and Equity Bank do intend to roll-out thin Sim card technology on a one year trial basis, without providing any safeguard to protect the vulnerability of over 8 million account holders and their personal data,” reads the petition.

He said the probability that account holders will lose data is very high since the country does not have a data protection policy.

Mr Murage said that the guidelines provided by the Cabinet to mitigate any possible losses were not adhered to when the Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) allowed Equity Bank to enter the lucrative mobile money services market using the thin Sim technology. “Having personal data in the hands of third parties without consent of the primary account holders is irreparable and cannot be remedied by an award of damages once it occurs,” he said in the petition.

UNSAFE TRANSMISSION

In the petition on which Central Bank appears as the fourth respondent, Murage said that CA and Equity had not assured the account holders that the uncontrolled transmission of data to a third party would be safe.

The advocate said CA had overlooked data protection when it approved Equity’s proposal.

“Various stakeholders in the telecommunication industry have raised concerns on the vulnerability of the technology to insecurity, communication interceptions and data contamination,” Murage told the court.

Murage said CA ought to have waited until the National Assembly passed suitable legislation before it entertained the proposal by the bank. He said they ignored the fact that it is important to have legislation in place to guide the process.

CA had last month given the bank the go ahead to roll-out the new service. Ngugi certified the matter as urgent and ordered Murage to serve the respondents.