David-Chyddy Eleke in Awka
A Nigerian medical student, Mr. Chinonso Okoye from Anambra State has designed an internet application known as ‘The Middle’, to check rising cases of fraudulent transaction on the internet.
Okoye who was a medical student of University of Calabar, Cross River State before abandoning medicine to pursue a career in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) said he was moved to build the application due to complaints of people making purchases on the internet, only for their goods not to be delivered.
He said, “This is mostly very rampant on Instagram (a social media platform), where fraudulent people now open online shops to advertise goods, and once they get buyers who make financial transfers to them, they close the account and open another.”
Okoye stated further that online shops had become the easiest means to defraud people successfully on the internet, and the trend had now posed a challenge to genuine online store operators.
“With an App like – The Middle, you can successfully transfer money to an online shop owner, and he would be unable to withdraw the money until you have clicked the certify button, after your goods have been delivered to you.
“I built this app to curb cases of fraud, both on the side of the seller, and on the side of the buyer who may get the goods and refuse to certify the payment. In cases like this, the app simply pays the online shop owner after waiting for three days for the buyer to certify the transaction,” Okoye said.
He recounted past experiences he had with shop owners on Instagram, where once a financial transaction was accomplished, the shop owner closes the account and opens another to keep defrauding unsuspecting customers.
“I was surfing the internet just yesterday, and I say an online shop that advertised very beautiful male underwear at cheap prices, I decided to check who the owner was, and found out it was a girl who had complained to me that she was defrauded of N80,000 by an online shop owner. “I put a call across to her and asked when she started the business, do you know what she said? She told me she wanted to use it to retaliate what was done to her, and they are many of them like that, but with The Middle, you will never be scammed,” the Anambra-born software programmer said.
