“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Fraud is an escalating threat to South Africa’s economic resilience. For consumers, it curbs spending. For businesses, it can stall growth or, worse, lead to failure. As fraudsters continue to hone and innovate their attacks, often mimicking the precision of targeted marketing campaigns, South Africa should consider how it can build on worldclass initiatives such as the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) to “go together” in the battle against fraud and financial crime.

Why reinvent the wheel?

South Africa’s banking landscape bears striking structural similarities to Australia’s, with most customers concentrating their business among the so-called “Big Five” banks. As is the case in South Africa, Australia has sought to reduce fraud risk by placing significant focus on collaboration. The Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX) and SABRIC share much in common.

There is scope, however, to build further upon such success, engaging in real-time signal-sharing to detect and prevent threats. South Africa need not reinvent the wheel but instead ought to borrow from and improve upon the behavioral consortiums we see in other geographies.

In South Africa, criminals stole 1.08 billion rand (about $60.7 million U.S.) through digital banking fraud in 2023, according to SABRIC. Meanwhile, Australia lost approximately $2.74 billion (equivalent to $1.8 billion U.S./ZAR 33.5 billion) to financial crime in 2023, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Absolute scam losses only tell part of the story, while the average loss in South Africa was ZAR 20 in 2023, such losses can have a disproportionate impact on low-income citizens.

In November of last year, the largest banks in Australia joined the world’s first real-time, inter-bank, behavior-based financial crime intelligence-sharing network, arming member sending institutions with evaluations of the trustworthiness of receiving accounts at other member banks before any money left a would-be victim’s account. Such a network provides a blueprint for rapid progress in South Africa.

Behavioral signals, such as hesitation, typing speed, mouse movements, and digital navigation patterns, reveal when a victim is under duress or being coached. Behavior provides an opportunity to identify and mitigate risk even if a transaction is authorized using the correct credentials and a trusted device. Using subtle changes in the customer's behavior, we're able to identify when a scammer is guiding the transaction, such as through the impersonation of a bank official or tech support agent.

Australian banks are now using the scope for real-time collaboration to identify and intervene in high-risk payments, typically this happens before the customer authorizes the payment. When the network identifies risks associated with a receiving account, BioCatch instantly delivers that intelligence to the sending bank, allowing it to review the transaction before executing a payment.

This proactive approach is already producing results. At National Australia Bank (NAB), for example, targeted interventions helped prevent customers from sending more than $48.5 million in high-risk payments over the course of two months. Using insights from its customers’ behavior and the BioCatch Trust™network, NAB was able to deliver real-time intervention messaging, avoiding the operational costs typically associated with a hold-and-review approach to payment fraud risk.

In Latin America we’ve also sought to help our customer deal with another worrying trend: device theft. Over the last three years, we’ve observed a significant spike in device theft in Latin America. Comparing the first quarter of 2024 with the first quarter of 2025, BioCatch customer data shows most countries in the region experienced a 30% increase in this crime, with Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru all documenting 50% more cases.

While this issue is by no means unique to the region, the impact has been profound, with half of frauds reported to BioCatch in Brazil linked to a stolen mobile device. How criminals execute these thefts varies from case to case, but generally speaking, device-thieves look to take advantage of people using their phones in public places.

Some groups specialize in stealing devices on public roads, quickly handing the stolen phone over to more technically skilled counterparts, who take control of the device, access the victim’s digital banking apps, and start transferring away the victim’s savings.

This makes the right fraud-prevention measures absolutely vital to combatting device-theft. Behavior-based solutions can identity unusual activity in real-time, flagging variations in the connection, transfers to new accounts, and payments to merchants previously unknown to the user. BioCatch combines these elements to create risk assessments that generate real-time alerts, so banks can take action to stop these transactions before the victim of a stolen device loses any money from their bank accounts.

Every payment fraud needs a mule

Regardless of how the fraud is committed, most fraud will only prove to be profitable if the criminal can successfully withdraw the stolen money.

Australian banks are also using behavioral data to tackle the other end of the fraud chain, identifying and mitigating the risks associated with money mules. Mule accounts often exhibit different customer usage patterns than legitimate accounts, such as abrupt changes in login locations, large inbound payments followed by immediate transfers, and minimal engagement with banking apps.

By analyzing these signals, Australian banks can block suspicious accounts and share intelligence about mule networks across institutions.

Go together, go further.

Fraud is a global issue, but South Africa has an opportunity to build on existing momentum to go further, faster, in the fight against fraud.

Here are a few concrete steps South Africa could take:

1. Adopt behavioral intelligence and enable real-time collaboration across the financial system, with a specific focus on reducing high-risk payments and money mules.
2. Establish industry-wide fraud intelligence sharing and continue to build on the work undertaken by SABRIC to mitigate money laundering and systemic digital fraud risk.
3. Create incentives for concrete action. Whether or not South Africa follows Australia's prevention-first approach, regulatory pressure will be crucial in driving progress.
4. Support these efforts with consumer education and faster incident reporting channels.

Implementing these proactive strategies will empower banks to protect their customers from even the most convincing scams. Yes, fraudsters are evolving, but they can’t hide the impact they have on a customer’s unique digital behavior. Behavioral intelligence can detect these subtle anomalies in real-time, allowing banks to intervene before any funds are lost.

South Africa can take a leadership position, demonstrating the power of collaboration to deliver a financial system that is smarter, fairer, and even more resilient to fraud risk.