Why Africa’s banks must recognize that trust is at the root of fraud prevention

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Article by cybersecurity leader and INETCO’s Chief Product Officer, Eren Ramdhani

Trust is the most valuable currency in today’s digital economy. For banks, it determines whether customers feel confident enough to save, invest, and transact. Yet across Africa, millions of people face daily fraud attacks that threaten that trust.

The scale of the challenge is staggering. Globally, digital fraudsters stole over $1 trillion in 2024—often targeting the most vulnerable populations—with a 71% year-over-year increase in cyberattacks using stolen or compromised credentials. To make matters worse for banks, the cost of fighting fraud typically dwarfs the value of fraud being detected.

In South Africa, fraud incidents surged by more than 300% that same year. These aren’t limited to occasional phishing emails. Criminal networks are deploying advanced, AI-driven tactics in crimes ranging from SIM swap fraud, account takeovers and BIN attacks to rogue payment terminal fraud and large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting financial infrastructure.

Part of the problem is that too many financial institutions still depend on reactive fraud detection methods. They wait until losses are reported or suspicious activity is flagged before updating rules and defences. This lag leaves customers vulnerable. Today’s fraudsters adapt in real time, often faster than legacy fraud systems can respond.

What’s required now is a major change in approach: the fraud solutions deployed by banks and payment processors need to adapt in real time, within milliseconds rather than hours or days.

This involves applying transaction intelligence alongside Generative AI (GenAI) and machine learning to immediately detect unusual activity, while deploying proactive systems that can adjust and intercept new threats as they emerge without interrupting legitimate customer transactions.

Securing customer transactions is a trust challenge, not just tech

At its heart, this isn’t only a technology challenge—it’s a trust challenge. If banks cannot guarantee secure transactions, customer confidence erodes. And when confidence breaks down, so does progress on financial inclusion, innovation, and growth.

Developed by a fintech leader based in Canada—one of the world’s most trusted nations—INETCO BullzAI faces this challenge like nothing else on the market today. The platform continuously learns from every transaction, updating behavioural models instantly and autonomously. It monitors transactions in real time, catching user behavioural drift and device usage anomalies even before they match known fraud patterns—vital for protection against evolving and zero-day threats.

Explainable AI drives a strong intelligence feedback loop, enriching scoring, reducing false positives and providing the field-level data insights fraud teams need to stay compliant and expedite fraud investigations.

INETCO BullzAI also uses its patented, AI-driven firewall to instantly block high-risk logins, terminals or suspicious payment activity with precision and without impacting legitimate customers. Unlike systems that rely on external vendors or lengthy retraining cycles, INETCO BullzAI adapts on its own, ensuring banks remain a step ahead of evolving threats.

A practical example of this proactive approach can be seen in African Bank, a South African institution with a strong focus on financial inclusion. Following acquisitions of Grindrod Bank, Sasfin, and Ubank, it has welcomed millions of new customers, making fraud prevention even more mission-critical than it already was.

INETCO BullzAI delivered 25% reductions in fraud losses in 6 months

By deploying INETCO BullzAI, African Bank has integrated real-time monitoring for a 360-degree customer view across all channels. The solution draws on end-to-end transaction intelligence to stop fraud before it harms customers.

The results speak for themselves: Within six months of deploying INETCO BullzAI, top financial organisations worldwide report achieving 45% fewer false positives, 25% reductions in fraud-related monetary losses, and 40% faster fraud investigations.

This combination of technology and partnership illustrates how digital trust can be strengthened: through proactive defence, cross-industry collaboration, and a willingness to move beyond outdated reactive strategies.

INETCO was recognised in the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention, 2025 report. As Gartner’s report puts it, “Generative AI (GenAI) augments existing anti-money-laundering (AML) and payment fraud detection systems through AI assistants, reporting tools, low-code capabilities and large transaction models. By generating synthetic payment data, it can train fraud detection models more effectively without the need for vast, real-world datasets. GenAI also has the potential to predict and simulate new fraud attacks, allowing financial institutions to better prepare and stress-test their detection systems.”

African Bank’s approach also highlights a broader lesson for the industry: Fraud prevention should not be treated solely as an operational cost, but as a long-term investment in trust, inclusion, and sustainable growth. Every successful fraud attempt damages not only a single institution, but the broader financial system — and that’s why building secure, reliable digital experiences is a shared responsibility. As more Africans join the financial system for the first time, or extend their engagement with the system, banks across the continent have a duty to protect them.

For those of us developing fraud-prevention solutions, the mission is straightforward: enable banks to protect every African customer every moment of every day. For banks, the challenge is equally clear: recognise that trust is foundational. Without it, innovation stalls; with it, people across Africa can safely participate in the digital economy.

That is why fraud prevention must evolve in seconds, not days. And that is why partnerships like the one between INETCO and African Bank matter now more than ever.

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