Uganda Tourist Money Transfer Scams And How To Avoid Them

In this article, we shall try to bring to light the most common ways tourist get scammed of their money before the start of their Uganda safaris. Most tourists lose their money in an attempt to organize gorilla trekking permits and chimpanzee tracking permits, while others lose their money when booking their tailor-made Uganda safaris. It would be important that you consider this before booking any Uganda safari or outsourcing the service of booking gorilla trekking permits.

Common Ways To Transfer Money To Uganda

There are generally three major ways to transfer money to Uganda, bank transfer (wire transfer), card payments and lastly remittance companies like western Union, MoneyGram among several other examples.

Wire Transfer

This is the most common money transfer option more so when people transferring money straight from their bank account to another bank account. It is one of the most common ways that tourists get scammed through man in the middle attacks. A man in the middle attack is a situation where the hackers gets into the system, blocks all messages that go to the company inbox and simply insert their bank account at the point when the client has to pay.

When this happens, the company never gets to know that the client responded since the hacker is in control of all messages the the customer or the client receives. It is very hard to avoid this kind of attack unless you make sure that the payment details given are similar to the companies name. But this does not also sometimes guarantee safety because the hacker can open an account in the company names but in a different country. It is very hard to survive this attack.

The easiest way to ensure that this is solved to confirm all payment details on the company’s phone contact that they usually offer on their website. Once you contact that number on the website and confirm the details, you will be safe.

Card Payments

Card payments in Uganda are usually handled by companies such as pesapal, DPO among several other international options. These are usually the most secure form of payments because you have a chance to do a cash back in case you do not get the service you paid for. But this only works with the company account has money. In case the company account does not have money, you will not be able to get a cash back. But atleast with this, you can be sure that you are paying the tour company because there is no way they can get on this platform without fulfilling the basic requirements.

We highly recommend card payment. The only down side is the high surcharges that some people find unbearable. But in regard to being secure, we highly recommend this option above bank transfer.

Money Remittance Platforms

This is the most insecure money transfer option. Whenever someone shares this option of money transfer, just flee for your dear life because chances are very high they are scammers. Any registered company will either share their banking details or card payment option. Platforms like western Union are used by scammers to receive money and then vanish.