A Parent Can't Check a Message. They Can Check a Rule.

Mobile money fraud was the scam most often reported in INTERPOL's 2026 African cyberthreat assessment: 97 percent of the countries that responded named it. It doesn't need to be clever. It needs a name the person already trusts, and a reason to hurry.

For a parent, a message that says "This is the school bursar, please send the Term 2 balance to this number today" fits both. It uses your school's name and it comes at the moment fees are on everyone's mind. The parent has no way to tell the real one from a copy. Neither would you, reading it cold on a phone at 9pm.

So don't ask parents to be better at spotting fakes. Give them something they can check instead.

What to do this week

Write one short notice, signed by you, and send it out the same way you send fee circulars. It says four things:

1. Where fees are paid. The account name and number, or the MoMo merchant number, written out in full. Nowhere else.
2. What the school will never do. Ask for fees to a personal number. Ask for a PIN, a code or a screenshot of an approval prompt. Ask a parent to "confirm" a payment by calling back an unknown number.
3. How to check. One office number that is answered. Any parent who gets a payment request can call it first.
4. How changes are announced. If the account ever changes, you will say so on paper, at a PTA meeting and in the class WhatsApp groups, all three. A change that arrives in one message and nowhere else is not a change.

Put it on the Term 2 fee circular. Have the bursar read it aloud at the next PTA meeting before 5 November. Pin it in the class groups.

Why a rule beats a warning

A general warning ("beware of fraud") asks the parent to make a judgement in the moment, under pressure, about a message built to look right. A rule moves the judgement to a calm Tuesday afternoon when you made it for them. In the moment they only have to compare: does this match the notice or not?

It also helps your own staff. A bursar who has to answer "is this number yours?" forty times a term will answer faster, and with more patience, when the answer is already printed on the circular.

The fourth line carries the most weight. Fraud that works usually works because something did change recently (a new term, a new number, a new bursar), so a parent has a reason to believe the change is real. If your school has said, in advance and in public, how change will arrive, a surprise one stops looking like news.

A school that has never told its parents how it asks for money has left the telling to whoever messages first.