by AKANI CHAUKE
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – AFRICA’S booming digital economy has made the continent a prime battleground for identity (ID) fraud.
This is according to the Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026, released by Sumsub, a global leader in digital identity verification.
Sumsub noted Africa was targeted amid a boom in mobile money, fintech platforms, and e-government services, which are driving financial inclusion at scale.
While low-effort scams are declining due to stronger verification systems, fraudsters have shifted toward more sophisticated attacks: deepfake-enabled liveness bypasses, synthetic identity rings, and coordinated post-KYC abuse are increasingly common.
Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, Head of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning at Sumsub, noted AI reshaped both offence and defence.
The official said attackers gained deepfakes, synthetic IDs, and autonomous fraud agents while defenders gained behaviour modelling, millisecond anomaly detection, and self-learning systems.
“The next frontier is verification of AI agents themselves — confirming not just who you are, but who acts on your behalf,” Goldman-Kalaydin said.
Sumsub forecasts a decisive shift in the global fraud landscape in 2026, with attacks becoming more sophisticated, automated, and damaging despite a possible decline in overall volumes.
Fraudsters are expected to rely heavily on advanced AI tools, including autonomous agents capable of probing systems, generating synthetic identities and imitating genuine user behaviour at scale.
“Identity verification is entering a new phase — one where automation, AI and data fusion converge,” said Sumsub Chief Technology Officer, Vyacheslav Zholudev.
He noted that next year’s major breakthroughs “won’t come from better document scanning, but from AI agents verifying other AI agents.”
– CAJ News