Grace Ashiru
South Africa recorded the highest rate of suspected digital fraud among African countries analysed in 2025, with 3.0 percent of consumer transactions flagged as potentially fraudulent, according to the TransUnion H1 2026 Update: Top Fraud Trends report. The figure sits slightly below the global average of 3.8 percent and represents a decline from 4.3 percent in 2024.
The report cautions that the drop does not necessarily indicate reduced criminal activity. Instead, it points to a shift toward more sophisticated, AI-enabled fraud techniques designed to increase precision and success rates, with generative AI enabling fraudsters to target consumers and businesses at greater scale.
South Africa stands out as one of the few markets where the highest concentration of suspected fraud occurs at the account login stage. In 2025, 3.0 percent of login attempts were flagged as potentially fraudulent, compared to 2.4 percent at account creation and 0.7 percent during financial transactions. The pattern suggests that attackers are prioritising account takeover methods such as compromised credentials and SIM swaps over the creation of new fraudulent accounts.
The median reported fraud loss among affected South African consumers was R11,055, the second highest in Africa after Kenya, and significantly below the global median of R27,879.
