Africa has overtaken every other region in the world for iGaming fraud, according to a new report from identity verification firm Sumsub, with fraudsters increasingly relying on stolen identities and AI-generated content to bypass operator defences.
The Sumsub iGaming Fraud Report 2026, drawn from more than three million fraud attempts and millions of identity checks conducted between 2024 and the first quarter of 2026, found that Africa’s fraud rate reached 2.54 percent in the first quarter of 2026, some 66 percent above the global average. That put the continent well ahead of Asia-Pacific at 1.92 percent, Europe and Latin America at 1.14 percent each, and North America at 0.44 percent.
Global iGaming fraud rose nearly 18 percent year-on-year, the report found, while the volume of suspicious transactions increased more than four and a half times and the average value of a suspicious transaction climbed above $6,500. Sumsub’s Southern Africa regional director, Jarryd Jensen, attributed the trend to Africa’s fast-growing online gaming sector and expanding access to financial services, which have created opportunities for legitimate operators but equally drawn in more sophisticated fraud networks.
| Africa fraud rate (Q1 2026) | 2.54%, highest of any region globally |
| Global average | 1.53% |
| Highest national rate | Côte d’Ivoire, 7.8% |
| Other hotspots | Burkina Faso 5.6%, Cameroon 5.1%, Malawi 4.7%, DRC 4.3% |
| Fraud detection point | 97% caught at facial biometrics (liveness) stage |
| South Africa trend | Fraud rate more than tripled in H2 2025 |
| Peak fraud hours (SA) | 2pm–8pm GMT+2 |
Unlike Europe, where forged documents make up a large share of detected fraud, the African pattern is dominated by identity misuse rather than fabrication. Sumsub’s data shows 97 percent of fraud on the continent is caught at the liveness, or facial-biometrics, stage, where the person attempting to verify an account does not match the identity on file. That points to criminals obtaining genuine identity details through data breaches, social engineering or informal trading networks, and then using real people’s credentials rather than manufacturing fake ones from scratch.
Sumsub’s iGaming product evangelist, Kris Galloway, described the industry as grappling with a flood of AI-generated fraud content, including synthetic faces, edited documents and templated identities submitted at scale. Even where individual attempts are unsophisticated, the sheer volume creates significant strain on verification systems and manual review teams, since generative tools have sharply lowered the cost of mounting fraud at scale, allowing organised fraud groups to operate with far greater reach than before.
Country-level variation across the continent is stark, with three of the five worst-affected markets located in West Africa. Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda showed improving trends toward the end of 2025, though fraud levels there remain elevated relative to global norms. South Africa, by contrast, is moving in the opposite direction, with its fraud rate more than tripling during the second half of 2025, a shift Sumsub flagged as warranting close monitoring given the size and maturity of the country’s regulated betting market.
Sumsub argues operators need to move beyond conventional know-your-customer checks toward layered fraud prevention combining identity verification, device intelligence, behavioural analytics and ongoing transaction monitoring throughout a player’s lifecycle. Jensen said operators best placed to succeed would be those balancing smooth onboarding with continuous risk monitoring, positioning trust and security as genuine competitive differentiators in Africa’s expanding iGaming market rather than mere compliance costs.
The full report is available at sumsub.com/igaming-fraud-report-2026.