South Africa's battle against financial crime intensified in 2022, with a concerning uptick in ATM explosive attacks and digital fraud, according to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre’s (Sabric) Annual Crime Stats 2022 report.

Despite the activation of dye-stain technology, ATM explosive attacks rose by 23%.

Disturbingly, criminals often succeeded in removing the stains from the cash.

However, there's a silver lining: branch before deposit robberies (before deposits are about to be made at a branch) are plummeted by 39% in 2022, largely due to the arrest of main suspects in KwaZulu-Natal, a hotspot for such incidents.

Digital crime, particularly banking application fraud, witnessed a 36% spike.

Fraudsters employed an array of tactics, from social engineering to exploiting data vulnerabilities.

The persistent menace of "vishing" – where scammers pose as bank officials to extract sensitive data – remains a significant threat.

While banking apps saw more incidents, online banking fraud recorded the highest average financial losses per incident, marking a 9% increase from 2021. Phishing and vishing were the primary methods used by criminals.

On the brighter side, mobile banking fraud incidents decreased by 9%, with SIM swap incidents dropping from 87% in 2021 to 76% in 2022. This suggests that such tactics are losing their effectiveness.

Vehicle asset finance (VAF) fraudulent applications dipped by 17.6%, thanks to robust fraud detection systems by banks.

Card fraud, encompassing debit and credit, declined by 18.4%. Additionally, card-not-present (CNP) fraud, despite having the highest fraud values, saw fewer incidents in 2022.

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Financial Crimes Surge in SA: SABRIC reports alarming rise in ATM explosive attacks and digital fraud

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