South Africans expressed financial scam concerns in a recent survey conducted by FICO. According to the survey, 91% of adult South Africans said they had sent a real-time payment (RTP), 92% had received an RTP and 90% will maintain or increase their use of RTP over the next year.

However, 64% of respondents said friends or family members have been victims of scams. 19% of respondents said they had paid for investments, goods or services they never received.

The survey also revealed consumers’ mindset about who should be responsible if they fall victim to a scam. 56% of South African adults think they are ultimately responsible if they send a payment to a scammer. However, about 15% of the respondents would change banks if they were a scam victim and were not satisfied with the bank’s response.

In many global markets, there is a regulatory push for banks (both depository and receiving) to be held liable if customers are victims of scams that involve authorized push payment/authorized user fraud. In South Africa, 29% of respondents said they think a bank should always refund a scam victim, while another 38% think they should be refunded most of the time.

Additional findings include:

• 70% of South Africans got an unsolicited text, email, phone call or other outreach they thought was part of a scam.
• 81% of South Africans think banks should have better fraud detection systems.
• 79% would feel positive if a bank stopped them from making a suspected scam payment.