In a recent chat with a client — an online lender — we got talking about bank APIs, screen scraping, and what happened when Capitec withdrew access to consumer transaction data. For years, most of their applicants shared transaction data straight from the bank. Verified at source, nothing to manipulate — fraud on that channel […]
In 2024, South Africans submitted 70.8 million applications for credit. Lenders declined 47.5 million of them. Two out of every three, and that ratio has been climbing for most of two decades – at the end of 2007 it was closer to four in ten. Not all of that is a visibility problem. Plenty of […]
The most dangerous AI output in financial services is not one that looks wrong. It is one that looks right, but isn’t. Over the past few months, clients have been asking us a fair question: “Can’t we just upload customer bank statements into ChatGPT or Claude and get the same result?” It’s a fair question. […]
truID attended the Open Finance Africa Symposium held in Cape Town – an intimate two-day gathering of around 50 delegates hosted by Cenfri and CGAP. The room brought together regulators, policymakers, financial sector stakeholders, and development partners to evaluate the opportunities, challenges, and implementation pathways for open finance across the African continent. Over two days, […]
The transaction layer no one is talking about We tend to think about credit in South Africa through the lens of banks – mortgages, vehicle finance, large loans. But that’s not where most of the activity is. Beneath that sits a far more active layer of the market: short-term loans, unsecured credit, and credit facilities. […]
Financial inclusion in South Africa remains constrained despite widespread bank account ownership. Millions of South Africans can open an account, yet cannot meaningfully use that account to access formal financial services. An estimated 21 million thin-file or credit-invisible consumers, many of them young people, informal earners, or newcomers to the workforce—are excluded from affordable credit, […]
For decades, credit in South Africa has been built almost entirely on 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘂 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮. And for decades, that meant millions of good, capable consumers were misunderstood, mispriced, or excluded – not because they were risky, but because lenders could only see a thin sliver of their financial reality. But 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. And it’s […]