Africa’s $1.4 trillion mobile money economy is under mounting pressure from a new generation of fraud, as cybercriminals deploy artificial intelligence to exploit the very systems driving financial inclusion across the continent.
According to the GSMA, Sub-Saharan Africa now accounts for nearly two-thirds of global mobile money transaction value, with 1.2 billion registered accounts and 341 million active users.
In an exclusive interview with IT Web Africa Thalia Pillay, CEO and Co-Founder of Orca Fraud however has warned that as adoption accelerates, so too does fraud.
“Mobile money is the infrastructure story of our generation, but it is also quietly becoming the fraud story of our generation,” she said.
Pillay pointed to industry data which shows that 90% of mobile money providers experienced identity fraud in the past year, while 88% were hit by social engineering attacks. Across Africa, cybercrime is estimated to drain more than $4 billion annually from the formal economy.
Zimbabwe’s ICT minister Tatenda Mavetera has put the local cost into sharp focus, revealing that the country loses over $30 million each year to mobile money fraud, with phishing attacks rising by more than 40%.
“We have seen a rise in mobile money scams and phishing attacks targeting our growing digital economy,” Mavetera said. “As we digitise , every new digital door becomes a potential entry point for AI-driven fraud.”
Pillay warned that the threat landscape is evolving rapidly. Fraud typologies now include SIM swap attacks, synthetic identities generated using AI, and deepfake-enabled scams where criminals clone voices to trick business owners into authorising payments.
“Fraudsters are now using AI to generate identities, documents and even biometric verification artefacts that can pass KYC checks at scale. This fundamentally changes the game for financial institutions,” she stated.
A major challenge lies in the mismatch between global fraud tools and African market realities. Many systems are designed for environments with stable connectivity, formal ID systems, and predictable user behavior, conditions that do not always apply across African markets.
“Global tools tend to either over-block growth or under-protect the system,” Pillay said. “African markets require locally trained models that understand agent networks, shared devices, and multi-SIM usage.”
The rapid growth of interoperable payments is compounding the problem. Cross-border transfers between banks and mobile wallets are surging, creating new laundering pathways that fraudsters exploit faster than regulators can respond.
“Fraud does not respect borders. Funds can move across three countries in days, but most fraud systems still operate in silos,” said Pillay.
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