From next Tuesday, information technology experts will converge on Nairobi to debate e-payments, focusing on mobile banking security and ATM fraud.

For two days, administrators, designers, and analysts drawn from East Africa, Netherlands, South Africa, UK and USA will tackle the subject under 'Combating Emerging Threats in Banking and Payment Transactions in East Africa.'

The conference is taking place at a time the market is leaning towards electronic business across the world, exposing debuting regions and countries to a web of scams. "Most banks do all they can to secure ATM and Point of Sale (POS) terminals," said Mr Sammy Kioko, the alliance manager for Cyber Sec Africa-- the organiser.

He, however, said the banks "can't properly safeguard themselves and their clients if they don't understand the ATM scams and methods used." Information PS Bitange Ndemo will preside over the conference.

High dependence on technology has been identified as one of the major risks facing commercial banks in East Africa, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Kenya survey conducted on 33 banks in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia early this year.

Data from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows consumers rapidly turned to alternative payment methods in the 12 months ending June this year, driven by the ease of operations.

The value of transfers through mobile money increased by 53.89 per cent to Sh919.22 billion as at the end of June, says the regulator.The number of mobile money transfer transactions increased by 44.90 per cent to 364.06 million over the same period.

Debit cards issued rose by 68.47 per cent to approximately seven million, while the total number of cards in circulation increased by 22.06 per cent to 8.6 million.

Credit cards use grew marginally to 117,835 from 111,383 as at June 2010 valued at Sh555.17 billion.