A property deposit is one of the riskiest online payments South Africans make

Every October, people and businesses across the globe recognise Cyber Awareness Month. A time that reminds consumers to strengthen their passwords, think twice before clicking suspicious links and be cautious about what they share online.

While useful advice, what’s missing in most of the warnings is guidance on one of the highest-value digital payments many South Africans will ever make: a property deposit.

“For a homebuyer, the most significant online transaction – and therefore the moment they’re most vulnerable to fraud – happens after an Offer to Purchase is accepted and they’re asked to transfer their deposit,” says Jackie Smith, CEO of Buyer’s Trust.

“A property deposit is not a routine payment. It can represent years of saving, sacrifice and planning. Yet the moment of transfer happens at one of the busiest and most emotionally charged stages of the homebuying journey, when buyers are trying to keep the transaction moving while responding to instructions from multiple parties.”

That moment, Smith says, deserves far more attention.

“Fraudsters understand this pressure,” she adds. “They look for moments where money, urgency and trust intersect.”

SA’s cybercrime risk is already sky-high

The risk is not theoretical for South African homebuyers. According to SABRIC’s 2025 Annual Banking Crime Statistics Report, home and mortgage loan fraudulent applications accounted for R595.9m in reported losses in 2025, representing roughly a quarter of the R2.4b lost to digital banking crime that year.

This sits within a wider increase in online financial crime and digital fraud, with TransUnion ranking SA first among the African countries analysed for suspected digital fraud in 2025. With 3% of consumer transactions flagged as potentially fraudulent.

At the same time, the risks facing consumers are becoming more sophisticated. INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 found that cybercrime-related losses across Africa more than doubled from R3.1b to R8b, driven largely by AI-facilitated scams, credential harvesting and automated social engineering campaigns.

Smith says the rise in credential-based fraud should concern homebuyers because property transactions now rely heavily on digital communication. “Banking details, documents, instructions and confirmations often move over email, creating multiple points where criminals can intercept, impersonate or manipulate the process,” she explains.

Personal information makes property scams more convincing

The risk of cybercrime is also growing because fraudsters do not always need to guess who is buying, who they are dealing with or where they are in the transaction.

A recent September 2026 cyber breach involving RelyComply, a third-party identity verification provider used by several South African financial services businesses, including a home loan finance company, shows why property-related personal information is valuable. When names, ID numbers, contact details, residential addresses and banking information are exposed, criminals can use that information to make phishing emails, impersonation attempts and fake payment instructions feel far more credible.

For buyers, this means a scam may not arrive as an obvious spelling mistake or clumsy request from a stranger. It may reference real details, real parties or real timing within a transaction.

“That is what makes these scams so dangerous,” says Smith. “The instruction can feel legitimate because it arrives at the right moment and contains enough accurate information to lower the buyer’s guard. Buyers should not treat familiarity as proof of safety.”

Deposit safety does not end at the point of payment

Avoiding a fraudulent payment instruction is critical, but Cyber Awareness Month should also prompt a broader question: Once the money has been paid, how secure, transparent and well-documented is the deposit process itself?

Even when a buyer has paid into the correct account, deposit safety should not be assumed. The next question is whether the process itself is clear, documented and understood.

A recent thread on X around a property deposit dispute before the courts has highlighted how little many buyers may understand about the legal and practical treatment of their deposit once it’s been transferred. For Smith, this is why deposit protection should not be treated as a narrow fraud-prevention issue.

“Cyber safety in a property transaction is not only about spotting a suspicious email,” she says. “It is also about making sure the buyer understands the process they are paying into. When a deposit is transferred, the buyer should know where it will be held, whose name the account is opened in, what records they will receive, whether interest will accrue and what happens if the transaction does not go ahead.”

The deposit process needs the same attention as the payment itself

For Smith, this is where Cyber Awareness Month needs to evolve: From warning consumers about risky behaviour online to helping them to both understand and ask harder questions about the systems behind high-value digital payments.

“The answer is not for buyers to become cybersecurity experts overnight,” says Smith. “The answer is to make sure the deposit process is structured, transparent and properly documented from the beginning.”

“When a buyer is transferring one of the largest sums of money they may ever pay, security cannot depend on trust alone,” Smith concludes. “There should be clear records, proper safeguards and confidence that the deposit is being managed in the buyer’s best interests from payment through to transfer.”

Issued by Jess Gois