South Africa just celebrated Freedom Day, but it’s worth asking what financial freedom looks like in the digital age.
There are about six million South Africans who remain unbanked or underbanked, according to the GSMA, but who do have access to cell phones. This is where mobile money services step in, providing a clear path towards financial inclusion, as players like M-PESA have proved in Kenya, which has a mobile money penetration rate of 87%.
It’s a wondrous case of technological leap-frogging, but to ensure its momentum isn’t hobbled, we need to look at how to secure such a vast digital space.
In South Africa, only 32% of adults use mobile money services, mainly due to the high existing banking penetration of 75%. Even so, for those who rely on mobile money services to store, send and receive money without needing a traditional bank account, they need to know that the platforms they are using are safe.
Mobile payment systems are the digital “rails” that move money across the country, connecting millions of previously unbanked citizens to the economy.
In this way, digital safety for mobile money transactions must be seen as critical infrastructure and as essential to the economy as electricity or roads.
Putting safety first
Because mobile money is a gateway to financial inclusion, it’s important that this gateway is protected. Mobile services are a primary access point for financial transactions in many parts of Africa.
However, even though mobile-first banking is accelerating financial inclusion across the continent, it is also expanding the attack surface for mobile-based fraud, including SIM-swap attacks.
In South Africa alone, nearly 60% of mobile banking fraud cases are linked to SIM-swap attacks, according to a 2025 telecoms security report from the Communication Risk Information Centre (COMRiC). The same report estimates that telecommunications-linked fraud costs the country about R5.3 billion per year.
Making financial services resilient to shocks
As financial services become more mobile and cloud-driven, cybersecurity is becoming a foundational part of financial stability. In wanting to protect payment systems from external shocks, it’s essential that operational resilience is considered.
Historically, regulators have encouraged banks to be resilient through guidelines and best practices. But now regulators are making resilience a legal requirement.
Increasingly, financial regulators are requiring banks to prove they can keep critical digital and financial services running during cyberattacks, outages or other disruptions, using regulatory models similar to the EU’s DORA framework.
A key part of this type of resilience hinges on data sovereignty and the importance of keeping critical data in-country. This is particularly important in an era where financial services increasingly depend on global cloud platforms and digital ecosystems.
A disruption to a cloud provider, a cyberattack on a third-party service or a breakdown in data governance could quickly ripple across the financial sector. Ensuring that security inspection and data oversight remain within national jurisdiction is therefore, more generally, also a matter of financial sovereignty.
Building trust in the digital economy
Ultimately, the success of mobile money and digital banking depends on one thing above all else: trust.
For millions of South Africans entering the formal financial system for the first time, a mobile device effectively functions as a bank branch in their pocket. If that gateway is compromised through fraud, cyberattacks or system outages, the consequences go far beyond financial loss. It can erode confidence in digital services and slow the progress of financial inclusion.
Freedom Day reminds us that freedom is not only political – it is also economic. The ability to save, send and receive money safely is a fundamental part of participating in modern society and the global economy as a whole.
Mobile money and digital banking have the potential to bring millions more South Africans into the financial system. But as the financial sector becomes more connected and cloud-driven, the resilience and security of these systems will become just as important as their accessibility.
If South Africa wants to unlock the full promise of financial inclusion, the next step is ensuring that the digital infrastructure behind mobile finance is secure, resilient and trusted.
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