South Africa’s payments ecosystem is growing at extraordinary speed. Digital commerce is expanding year on year, consumer adoption is climbing, and new payment rails are rapidly reshaping how money moves. Account-to-account (A2A) payments already make up more than 22% of e-commerce transactions and are projected to rise to over 26% by 2027. Over 54 million South Africans have bank accounts, and platforms like Ozow are at the centre of this transformation.

Today, Ozow isn’t just an A2A payments leader: it’s a full stack payments service provider (PSP), offering a range of payment methods including debit and credit card acceptance and voucher redemption.

But as the market accelerates, so does the complexity of fraud. According to SABRIC’s 2024 Annual Crime Statistics, digital banking fraud losses exceeded R1.4 billion in 2024, up from just over R1 billion in 2023. Reported incidents nearly doubled, rising from 31,612 cases in 2023 to over 64,000 in 2024, underscoring the scale and sophistication of criminal activity.

Fraudsters are increasingly exploiting the speed of modern payment rails and the surge in digital adoption. Advanced social engineering, device cloning and Fraud-as-a-Service networks are being deployed to target both consumers and merchants at scale. While overall financial crime losses fell year on year, digital banking fraud reached its highest level in recent years, highlighting how attackers are shifting tactics to follow where transactions are moving fastest.

To grow sustainably, trust must scale just as quickly as access and adoption. This is exactly why Ozow has chosen to partner with Orca Fraud. As Ozow expands its market-leading payment infrastructure, embedding advanced fraud prevention has become a strategic priority.

By integrating Orca’s AI-driven fraud orchestration platform across all payment methods and channels, Ozow can monitor, detect and respond to threats in real time, ensuring a consistent layer of protection no matter how customers choose to pay.

This omni-channel approach strengthens the trust foundation that underpins a resilient and inclusive digital economy, enabling Ozow to scale confidently while giving merchants and consumers a safer, frictionless experience.

A partnership designed for an inflection point

Ozow has played a defining role in South Africa’s shift toward real-time, inclusive digital payments. Its technology powers payments for thousands of merchants across the country - from national retailers like Dis-Chem and Mr Price to e-hailing platforms like Uber, leading e-commerce players such as Takealot and Mr D, ticketing and events platforms, gaming operators, travel brands, and airlines like LIFT and FlySafair.

By enabling millions of bank account holders to transact online easily and securely, Ozow helps these merchants drive higher conversion rates, reach new customer segments, and unlock revenue through fast, trusted payments.

Black Friday 2024 saw record transaction volumes processed across Ozow’s platform, underscoring the pace at which digital payments are scaling in South Africa. Over the course of the week-long Black Friday shopping event last year, Ozow processed more than 1.89 million digital payments.

91.4% of payments were completed via mobile, reflecting how central mobile commerce has become to the country’s payment landscape. Retailers saw a 96% increase in transaction volume compared to the previous year, with payments completed in an average of just 24-28 seconds.

For merchants, this momentum translates into faster settlement, broader consumer reach, and the ability to serve customers who prefer a range of digital payment methods - from A2A to cards and vouchers.

Strengthening trust at scale

But this rapid growth also brings new risks. Banking apps are now the primary channel for digital banking crime, accounting for 65.3% of all fraud incidents and more than R1.2 billion in losses in 2024 alone. Criminal networks are becoming more sophisticated, targeting account takeovers, synthetic identities, mule networks and coordinated scams. These aren’t isolated risks; they represent systemic threats that, if left unchecked, can slow merchant growth, increase operational costs and erode customer trust.

That’s why Ozow made the strategic decision to strengthen its trust layer now, at the infrastructure level. By partnering with Orca, Ozow can continue to scale with confidence, embedding real-time fraud orchestration directly into its core payment flows, and giving merchants across verticals the protection they need to grow without increasing their exposure risk.

• For retailers and e-commerce brands, this means fewer chargebacks, less manual review and more approved transactions so checkout stays fast and frictionless.
• For travel and e-hailing platforms, it means securing high-volume, time-sensitive transactions without slowing down customer journeys
• For ticketing, gaming and digital service providers, it means defending against account takeovers and synthetic identities
• For consumers, it means safe, secure payments they can trust every time they check out

Commenting on the partnership, Rachel Cowan, Ozow’s Interim CEO, shared:

“We’re excited to partner with Orca Fraud to proactively strengthen our fraud detection and mitigation capabilities across Ozow’s payments suite, providing even greater value and peace of mind to our merchants and customers.

We’re also proud to support South African fintechs that are driving real innovation and impact within the ecosystem. It’s inspiring to see women-founded businesses making waves in this space, and we look forward to growing this partnership together.”

Thalia Pillay, Orca Fraud Co-Founder and CEO added:

“Fraud isn’t just a financial risk; it’s a trust risk. As payment rails scale and transactions move faster, protecting that trust becomes critical. Partnering with Ozow allows us to bring advanced, real-time fraud orchestration to millions of transactions, ensuring merchants can grow confidently and consumers can transact securely.

This is a defining moment for South Africa’s digital payments ecosystem - and we’re proud to be building the future of trusted payments together.”

Securing growth from the ground up

In many markets, fraud prevention has traditionally been treated as an external layer that gets added after scale. But in fast-moving emerging markets like South Africa, this approach is too slow and too fragmented to keep up. Fraudsters are evolving fast, lowering their technical barriers through what’s increasingly known as ‘Fraud-as-a-Service’. Instead of requiring deep technical expertise, criminals can now buy ready-made phishing kits, mule account networks and malware on underground markets. These plug-and-play tools make sophisticated scams easier to launch and far more scalable than ever before.

Orca’s orchestration platform enables Ozow to counter this dynamic directly. By combining multiple detection models with real-time behavioural intelligence, it allows payment flows to be monitored, scored and secured dynamically, without adding unnecessary friction for legitimate customers. This approach protects merchants from escalating fraud risks while maintaining the seamless, instant payment experience that consumers have come to expect.

The result is an ecosystem where speed and security reinforce one another, rather than compete for priority.

Powering a safer digital economy

This collaboration is not just about two companies; it reflects a larger shift in how South Africa’s payment infrastructure is evolving. In 2024 alone, total potential financial crime losses exceeded R30.7 billion, with R2.7 billion in actual losses reported. As digital commerce scales, trust can no longer be treated as a secondary layer; it must be built into the fabric of the ecosystem.

For merchants, this means being able to grow without facing rising fraud losses or high false decline rates. For consumers, it means faster and safer transactions with less friction. For financial institutions, it offers a stronger risk infrastructure that can adapt to the speed of change in the market.

And for the ecosystem as a whole, it represents a step toward a more resilient digital economy. By embedding trust directly into the rails, Ozow and Orca are helping to ensure that South Africa’s payments ecosystem can expand with confidence.

Looking ahead

Commenting on the future of the partnership, Ozow’s leadership team shared:

“As Ozow continues to roll out Orca’s fraud detection and prevention solutions, we see South African businesses becoming more empowered with greater visibility and autonomy in how they manage risk and fraud prevention.This collaboration will ultimately help raise industry standards for fraud management and encourage more people to transact confidently through secure digital channels.”

For us at Orca, the partnership represents a clear signal: sustainable growth requires more than just faster payments; it requires trusted payments. Orca Co-Founder and CEO Thalia Pillay shares her thoughts on the partnership and what it means for the industry:

“Fraud isn’t just about financial loss; it’s about protecting trust. Ozow has built one of the most trusted payment brands in South Africa, and partnering with them means we can bring real-time, adaptive fraud orchestration directly into that ecosystem. What’s blown us away is their team: world-class engineers, razor-sharp data minds and product thinkers who build with ambition and heart.They move fast, care deeply about what they’re building and it shows. It’s been such a joy working with people who mirror our obsession with quality and impact. Together, we’re helping merchants scale safely and giving consumers the confidence to pay instantly, without worry.”

By combining Ozow’s reach and Orca’s fraud intelligence, the two companies are helping to build an ecosystem where security is not a trade-off for innovation but a catalyst for it.
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Ready to scale with trust at the core of your payment flows? Let’s chat about how Orca’s fraud orchestration platform can help your business grow securely.