Pretoria - While some South Africans may be reluctant to join in the wave of digital banking, the latest banking industry crime statistics have pegged going online as the safest way to transact.
According to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre's (Sabric) 2021 Crime statistics, banking on digital platforms such as banking apps, online and cellphone had exceeded all other transaction channels.
The annual statistics revealed that this had also become the safest way to do banking as from 2020 to 2021, digital fraud incidents had decreased by 18%, with the biggest decline being in mobile banking fraud.
While the number of incidents reportedly declined, it was revealed that there was a 45% increase in the total gross losses in digital banking.
“Digital banking products are far safer than in-person banking and enable people to transact from anywhere safely. Despite this, criminals have adjusted their social engineering tactics to leverage people’s data from social media and data leaks, making their efforts to manipulate customers difficult to spot,” explained Sabric CEO Nischal Mewalall.
Mewalall said in contrast to this ATM attacks had increased by 11% in 2021 with a 17% increase in losses, with incidents where explosives were used increasing by 15%.
While at the same time the number of angle grinder incidents were said to have decreased by 11%, from 47 in 2020 to 42 incidents in 2021.
The CEO said the centre was, however, concerned by the rise in the number of ATM attacks, as there were technology and security measures deployed to make ATMs safer.
Although the industry recorded an 8% decrease in associated robbery incidents overall in 2021, branch-before-deposit incidents increased by 56% with financial losses in the same category increasing by 85%.
In addition, the recent statistics for the first time featured application fraud via vehicle and assets, home loans and unsecured fraud for current, cheque and savings accounts, personal and business loans, which revealed that vehicle and asset finance fraud had increased by 53% in 2021.
At the same time only 12% of reported fraudulent mortgage loan applications were successful while unsecured loans saw a 4.4% decrease.
Card fraud, for debit cards, in particular where the card was not present, on the other hand reportedly contributed to 55.3% of all card fraud in 2021, which stood at 31.5% as of 2020, especially with the increased online merchants.
Despite the positive statistics on online banking, Mewalall warned that online shopping could be unsafe because fake websites were being used to defraud people of their money and to harvest their credit card data.
He added that in certain instances scammers had even delivered inferior products to create the impression that the website was legitimate.
“We are making inroads in combating banking and financial crime in South Africa and have trained more than 900 police and National Prosecuting Authority personnel on banking products and related evidence."
"We are also working closely with the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations, to establish task teams across provinces to aggressively address prioritised banking crime threats,” Mewalall added.
Pretoria News