The safest ways to bank in South Africa – online vs mobile vs app

·4 Oct 2018

The South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) has released its inaugural digital banking crime statistics.

According to the report, in 2017 there were 13,438 incidents across banking apps, online banking and mobile banking – costing the industry more than R250 million in gross losses.

However, reported incidents from January to August 2018 already show a 64% increase, with gross losses also increasing by 7% when compared to the same period in 2017.

While Sabric did not report on how many users choose to bank on each individual platform, its data does how many incidents occur over a set time period and the average amount of money stolen in an ‘average’ incident.

Focusing on this data, BusinessTech looked at the ‘safest’ platforms to bank on in South Africa.

Banking apps

Sabric’s data shows that there have been 4,922 incidents of banking app fraud from January – August 2018, an increase of just under 20% compared to the same period last year.

However, the total cost of these incidents has risen dramatically (100%) to R70.1 million in 2018.

Effectively this means that the average ‘onslaught’ – or amount taken – per incident has risen from R7,560 in 2017 to R14,253 in 2018.

Mobile banking

Mobile banking fraud also saw a steady increase when looking at the January – August 2018 period, rising 100% compared to the same period last year.

The total cost of these incidents has also risen by 41.3%, from R16.7 million to R23.6 million.

However, the average financial onslaught per incident has decreased year-on-year from R4,295 in 2017 to R2,741 in 2018.

Online banking

According to Sabric’s data, there have been 2,767 incidents of banking app fraud from January – August 2018, an increase of just under 43.8% compared to the same period last year.

However, the total cost of these incidents has declined year-on-year, from R123.7 million to R89.3 million.

This means that the average financial onslaught per incident has also declined – from R64,300 to R32,298.

Despite this decrease, online banking still has the highest cost per incident when looking at the three main digital banking options.