South Africans lose billions of rands to scams every year.
In most cases they’re unaware or under-informed about the constantly changing scam landscape.
In others, they know they’re involved in a scam but are too ashamed to ask for help getting out of it.
Enough is enough.
It’s time to take our power back from scammers.
How?
Democratising financial crime expertise and knowledge for all.
Slam the Scam
In a bold move to fight back against scammers, Capitec has founded Slam the Scam, an independent fraud awareness initiative dedicated to helping South Africans take their power back by staying informed and ahead of scams.
Scams are packaged to feel exciting, full of urgency, opportunity, and “too good to miss” moments.
Fraud education on the other hand, has traditionally felt the opposite: flat, cautionary, and easy to ignore.
But what if it didn’t have to be?
That’s the thinking behind Slam the Scam.
Slam the Scam is a bold, standalone initiative, with its own brand, channels, voice, and tone, designed to make fraud education as engaging as the scams it aims to stop.
Built on deep financial crime expertise from experts at Capitec and across the industry, it translates complex fraud intelligence into clear, practical insights people can actually use.
At its core, the Slam the Scam initiative breaks down how scams really work, the tactics scammers rely on, the methods they use to build trust, and the human vulnerabilities they exploit.
But it does so in a way that is accessible, relatable, fun and engaging, turning awareness into action, and information into instinct.
According to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC), South Africans lost a staggering R2.7 billion to financial crime in 2024.
Within this category, investment fraud is just one of many threats.
Billions more are lost every year to government impersonation, phishing emails, lottery fraud, online task scams, fake job offers, romance scams, tech support fraud and more.
One recent study showed that 76% of South Africans received scam attempts in the past year, and 1 in 11 have fallen victim.
The financial and emotional toll is devastating – not just the money lost, but the shame, stress and loss of trust that follows.
How current approaches fall short
Current efforts to combat scams in South Africa are largely fragmented.
Individual banks maintain their own fraud detection in silos so that a scam blocked by one institution simply reappears targeting another’s customers the next day.
While consumer education campaigns are valuable, scammers are evolving even faster.
And with the rapid advancement of generative AI, the cost of creating convincing scam campaigns is approaching zero.
Any bad actor can impersonate a loved one needing money, or even build an entire phishing operation in a matter of hours.
In an effort to consolidate efforts across the board, Slam the Scam aims to partner with other banks, corporates, telecoms, organisations and experts in the field to share financial crime intelligence, contribute resources and help scale the platform’s reach.
Protecting South Africans from scams is not the responsibility of any single institution: it’s a shared mission.
Scammers are organised. It’s time we are too.
Get educated, join the movement and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn: #SlamTheScam
