Regular Internet banking fraud costs victims much more per incident than banking app fraud.
Regular Internet banking fraud causes the largest losses for South African victims, averaging R73,582 per case, despite being less common than mobile banking app fraud.
89% of South Africa’s 110,074 digital banking fraud incidents in 2025 involved mobile banking apps. However, most of these cases resulted in smaller losses of R17,389 per case.
Internet banking, by comparison, costs four times as much as app fraud on average, but accounted for less than 9% of all digital banking fraud cases.
The South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) reported the statistics earlier in August, indicating that digital banking crime remained the biggest threat to the sector.
Thalia Pillay, CEO and co-founder of Cape Town-based anti-digital-fraud company Orca Fraud, explained the differences in the digital banking methods that drove higher losses in Internet banking.
“Internet banking carries a different transaction profile than the app. It’s the channel that businesses and professionals use for larger, less frequent payments,” she said.
“A common scam tactic is compromising a business’s email communications, sending a fraudulent instruction to change the supplier’s banking details or approving a payment to a new account.”
This type of Internet banking fraud is called supplier mandate fraud, which sees fewer incidents reported, but still leads to a higher concentration of loss.
Pillay said these particular transactions are difficult to identify and stop because they appear to banks like normal transactions.
“The credentials are correct, the user is authenticated, and the payment itself is properly authorised,” she said.
“The deception happened earlier and is usually reported by the customer once they realise what has happened.”
Detecting this type of digital banking fraud relies on the bank being able to detect subtle, unusual characteristics of the payment itself.
Pillay said that banks should look for red flags, including whether the specific beneficiary had previously received funds from the business, or if a newly created account was receiving unusually large payments.
“These signals don’t prove fraud, but they can buy a fraud team enough time to intervene before the money moves on,” she said.
Orca Fraud co-founders, CEO Thalia Pillay (left), with CTO Carla Wilby (right).
Pillay said that the initial instinct is to think that mobile banking apps are unsafe because they are the most-used channel for digital fraud, and most fraud begins outside the app.
“This could be a criminal impersonating a trusted organisation, creating urgency, and guiding a customer through a process in real time,” she said.
“The app is where the customer, already deceived, approves a payment or moves money.”
Another common tactic used by fraudsters to steal money from South Africans is the employment of remote access software.
This tactic sees fraudsters talk victims into installing screen-sharing software under the guise of support or verification.
The software allows criminals to see users inputting their personal details, including passwords, account names and OTPs.
Pillay said that the accessibility of advanced and affordable generative AI tools meant that fraudsters were rapidly becoming increasingly sophisticated.
She said it was a misconception that young South Africans did not fall for AI-assisted scams. A recent report from the South African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS) showed otherwise.
“Millennials and Gen Z users, who we would assume have grown up with technology, are more alert and aware, but still fall victim to fraud,” said Pillay.
“Users need to become more vigilant and more advanced in the ways they keep themselves safe.”
Pillay said South Africa’s banking and financial industries need to establish a broad-based collaboration to share data and intelligence to combat fraud.
She said that each different bank and each financial company improving individual technical capacity was a step, but each institution’s view could only go so far.
Pictured in article thumbnail: SABRIC CEO Andre Wentzel and Special Investigating Unit (SIU) head Leonard Lekgetho.
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