Every week, traders in our markets and sellers online lose goods to the same trick: the fake bank alert. A customer buys items, asks for your account number, and a minute later your phone buzzes with a credit alert. It looks exactly like your bank’s message. You hand over the goods. Hours later, your real balance has not moved — the “alert” was manufactured, and the customer is gone.
Here is how to protect yourself.
1. Never trust the alert SMS — check your balance yourself. A text message can be faked; your bank balance cannot. Before you release any item, open your bank’s official app or dial your bank’s USSD code and confirm that the money is truly sitting in your account. If the app shows nothing, you have received nothing — no matter what any SMS says.
2. Know the difference between “alert” and “credit”. Some fake alerts are edited screenshots; others are real SMS sent from bulk messaging services using a bank’s name as the sender ID. Your bank’s genuine alert and a fake one can look identical side by side. That is why the alert itself is never proof. The balance is the only proof.
3. Watch the customer’s behaviour. Fake-alert fraudsters are usually in a hurry. They pressure you to release the goods quickly — a driver is waiting, they are late for an event, the shop is about to close. Honest customers can wait two minutes for a balance check. Any customer who fights a simple balance confirmation is telling you something.
4. Be careful with “transfer screenshots”. A screenshot of a successful transfer page means nothing. Screenshots are the easiest thing in the world to fake. The same goes for a debit alert shown on the customer’s phone. Only your own confirmed balance counts.
5. If the money “reverses”, it was never yours. Some scammers make a real transfer and then recall it, or use a cheque that bounces. If a payment disappears from your account after looking real, report it to your bank immediately and keep every chat, receipt and phone number — then report to the police.
The one rule to remember: goods leave your hand only after the money lands in your account — confirmed by you, inside your own bank app or USSD, not by any message on any phone.
Share this with a trader or seller you know. Two minutes of checking can save somebody’s whole stock.
