A fake bank alert is a message, screenshot or receipt that says money has reached your account when it has not. The only proof that counts before you hand over goods is the money itself, showing as a completed credit in your own bank app. Everything else, however real it looks, can be made on a phone in under a minute.
The short version
A buyer can fake an SMS, a transfer screenshot or a printed receipt, but nobody can fake money sitting in your own account. Check your bank app yourself, every time, before anything leaves your hands.
- Open your bank app or internet banking yourself and look for a completed credit with the exact amount, before you release any goods.
- Most transfers between Nigerian banks land within seconds or a few minutes, so a buyer who says it is “pending” or “processing” has not paid you yet.
- Never send back an “extra” amount someone says they paid by mistake until you see the full payment in your app; if it is real, their bank can reverse it.
- Bank refund rules for transfer fraud are built around money that actually moved, so a seller who ships on a fake alert usually has nothing for a bank to trace.
- If it happens to you, keep the chats, phone number, screenshots and any CCTV footage, and report it on the Nigeria Police cybercrime portal.
In plain terms: when a scammer fools you with a fake alert, no money moves at all. Your bank has no transfer to trace or reverse, so the loss usually stays with you. Refund rules for payment fraud, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) draft guidelines on push payment fraud released for comment in November 2025, deal with money that left someone’s account. That makes the 30 seconds you spend checking your app the only real protection you have.
Payment fraud is still a big business. The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) reported in June 2026 that losses to digital payment fraud were ₦25.85 billion in 2025, down 51% from ₦52.26 billion in 2024, across 67,518 reported cases. Fake alerts are a different trick: they never touch the payment system, which is exactly why they keep working on busy sellers.
How to spot a fake bank alert in 60 seconds
Do these checks in this order, for every sale, even when the buyer is a regular.
- Ignore the proof the buyer shows you. A screenshot, a “transfer successful” page or a printed slip only shows what is on their screen. Fake transfer apps and simple photo editing can produce all three.
- Open your own bank app or internet banking. Type the address or open the app yourself. Do not tap a link the buyer sends.
- Find the credit in your transaction history. Look for one completed credit with the exact amount and the sender’s name. A small real payment followed by an “alert” for the rest is a known trick, so the full amount must be there.
- Check that your available balance went up. If the balance has not changed, the money has not arrived, whatever the SMS says.
- For big sales, call your bank. Use the number on the back of your card or in the official app, not a number the buyer gives you.
If your app is slow or the network is bad, wait. A real transfer will still be there in 10 minutes. A scammer usually will not.
The fake alert tricks sellers see most
The SMS that looks like your bank
Scammers send texts that copy a bank’s alert format, sometimes from an ordinary phone number and sometimes with a sender name that looks right. Compare it with real alerts from your bank. Different spacing, a missing balance line, a balance that does not match yours, or odd spelling are all signs. But even a perfect-looking SMS is not proof, because sender names can be faked too.
The edited screenshot or receipt
Fake transfer apps produce receipts with the right logo, a session ID and a “successful” tick. A session ID helps your bank trace a real transfer. It proves nothing on a screenshot.
“It is pending, the network is bad”
Most transfers between Nigerian banks arrive within seconds or minutes. If a buyer says the money is pending and asks you to release the goods anyway, treat it as unpaid. A real delay is the bank’s problem to fix, not a reason for you to ship.
“I sent too much by mistake, please send back the extra”
The buyer sends a fake alert for more than the price and asks you to refund the difference, from your own money. If someone really overpaid, the full amount will be in your account, and they can ask their bank to reverse the transfer. Do not send anything until you have checked.
The rider who cannot wait
Pressure is part of the trick. A dispatch rider “on the way to another drop”, a buyer who keeps calling, or a story about an emergency are all designed to stop you checking. The check takes under a minute. Take it.
Set up your shop so a fake alert cannot fool you
- Turn on in-app notifications from your bank, so a real credit shows up inside the app, not only as an SMS.
- Make one rule for everyone who works for you: no goods leave until the owner, or one trusted person, has seen the money in the app.
- Use one account for the business, so new credits are easy to spot.
- Prefer payment links or a POS terminal that confirms the payment itself, instead of waiting for a buyer’s screenshot. Our look at how payment links are changing social commerce explains how that works.
- Keep CCTV footage of your counter if you have a camera, and save chats with buyers until the sale is done.
What to do if you already shipped the goods
- Stop and collect evidence. Save the chat, the buyer’s phone number and account details, the fake screenshot or SMS, the delivery address and rider details, and any CCTV footage.
- Report it to the police. The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre runs an online reporting portal. You can also report at your nearest police station. Keep the reference you are given.
- Tell your bank. It cannot refund a payment that never happened, but if the buyer gave a real account number, the bank can flag it.
- Warn other sellers carefully. Share the trick and the warning signs in your traders’ group. Do not post anyone’s phone number, address or photo, because you could get the wrong person and land in legal trouble yourself.
- Secure your own accounts if you shared any codes or logged in through a link the buyer sent. Our guide to securing every account you own walks through it.
Fake alerts are one of many scripts doing the rounds. Our roundup of the biggest online scams in Nigeria this year covers the others.
What to watch
The CBN released draft rules on push payment fraud in November 2025, and we could not find a final version on its website as of Oct. 13, 2026. When the final rules arrive, they will set how fast banks must investigate and refund people who are tricked into sending money. They will not change the one rule that protects sellers: if the money is not in your account, the sale has not happened.
