South Africans have not given up on vehicle ownership. They have simply become more creative about achieving it.
By Ayesha Hatea, director of research and consulting at TransUnion Africa
Faced with ongoing affordability pressures, consumers are reconsidering everything from the brands they buy and the vehicles they choose to how they finance and access mobility. These shifts are creating new opportunities across the automotive ecosystem. They are also reshaping where fraud risk emerges and how businesses establish trust with customers.
For automotive businesses, this creates opportunity. But it also changes the risk equation.
As access to mobility becomes more flexible, the number of points at which trust needs to be established is increasing. Fraud is no longer simply a question of whether a vehicle-finance application is genuine. It can emerge through identity, documentation, income, ownership, payment and digital interactions across the broader automotive ecosystem. The industry therefore needs to think differently about what it means to know and trust a customer.
The consumer is changing the automotive journey
The resilience of vehicle demand is important, but the more significant story is what is happening underneath it.
TransUnion’s Q2 2026 Mobility Insights Report shows new passenger vehicle sales increased 15,8% year on year, even as households continue to contend with rising living costs and fuel price pressure. At the same time, vehicle purchase intent declined from 22% to 19% between Q1 and Q2.
Together, these indicators suggest demand remains resilient, but consumers are becoming more considered about when, what and how they buy.
Consumers are still finding ways to access mobility, but they are assessing the economics of that decision more carefully. Monthly repayments, fuel efficiency, servicing, insurance and the total cost of ownership are becoming increasingly important alongside the vehicle itself.
This is changing the automotive customer journey. A consumer may enter the market through a digital search, compare a wider range of brands, consider a different financing structure and complete more of the transaction remotely than would historically have been the case.
More choice creates more opportunity for fraud
Greater choice and accessibility are positive developments for the automotive industry. But every new route into mobility can also create another point of vulnerability. As consumers explore used vehicles, alternative financing structures, rental models and digital purchasing journeys, businesses are exposed to risks that extend beyond the traditional finance application.
Identity fraud and synthetic identities can undermine the initial customer interaction. Document manipulation and income misrepresentation can affect affordability assessments. Ownership fraud can create risks further along the vehicle lifecycle, while payment fraud can emerge at the point of transaction.
These are not necessarily separate problems. In an increasingly connected automotive ecosystem, they can be different expressions of the same underlying challenge: establishing whether the person, transaction and circumstances are consistent with one another.
This is why fraud prevention needs to move beyond individual checks. The question is no longer simply whether a customer can be verified. It is whether the business has enough connected intelligence to understand the risk surrounding the interaction.
This is where a more integrated approach to fraud prevention becomes important. TransUnion combines identity, device, behavioural, financial and automotive data to help businesses identify inconsistencies earlier in the customer journey.
Affordability is changing the risk equation
The growing presence of brands competing on price, specifications and technology demonstrates that consumers are looking for value rather than simply the lowest price. New vehicles are gaining share relative to used vehicles, while consumers continue to assess different ways of making mobility financially manageable.
A constrained consumer is not necessarily a higher-risk consumer. Financial pressure should not be confused with fraud risk. What is changing is the complexity of the decisions being made around the transaction.
When affordability becomes central, businesses need to look beyond whether an application meets a particular threshold. They need to understand the wider context around the customer and transaction to identify inconsistencies that may indicate elevated fraud risk, without treating financial pressure itself as evidence of fraud.
From verification to intelligent trust
Traditional verification remains important, but it is increasingly being strengthened by a connected approach to understanding risk. This can bring together identity, device, behavioural and financial information to give businesses a broader view of the customer and transaction.
Looking at these signals together can help businesses identify inconsistencies and distinguish legitimate customers from higher-risk activity earlier in the journey.
The objective is not to add friction to every customer interaction. Better intelligence allows businesses to focus intervention where it is most needed, helping legitimate customers move through the journey more seamlessly.
That distinction matters in an automotive market where speed and convenience are increasingly part of the customer proposition.
Trust is becoming part of the automotive proposition
The next phase of automotive growth will be shaped by the industry’s ability to respond to consumers who want greater value, flexibility and convenience.
Consumers need confidence that their identity and financial information will be protected. Dealers and financiers need confidence that the person entering a transaction is genuine. Insurers need confidence in the information supporting a policy. Businesses across the ecosystem need confidence that payments, ownership and transactions are legitimate.
Trust is therefore becoming more than a risk-management function. It is becoming part of the customer experience. As consumers find new ways to access mobility and more interactions move across digital channels, fraud will continue to evolve alongside the customer journey.
The response cannot be to put more barriers between consumers and mobility. Rather, it must be to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the interactions taking place across the ecosystem.
For OEMs, dealers, financiers and insurers, connecting the right intelligence at the right point in the journey will become increasingly important. The future of mobility will not only be defined by who can offer consumers the right vehicle at the right price, but by who can make that journey accessible, convenient and trusted.