As cryptocurrency adoption expands across Africa, the security of digital assets is increasingly becoming a consumer protection and financial governance issue, with exchanges and regulators facing pressure to strengthen safeguards against scams, fraud and cybercrime.
Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is using Cybersecurity Awareness Month to encourage African crypto users to adopt basic security measures, while highlighting the growing role of compliance, law-enforcement cooperation and financial education in protecting digital-asset users.
The campaign comes as African markets move towards more formal oversight of virtual assets. Kenya enacted its Virtual Asset Service Providers Act in 2025 and has been developing regulations to operationalise licensing and supervision of the sector, while Ghana has introduced a legal framework for virtual asset service providers. South Africa, meanwhile, has continued expanding its regulatory approach to crypto assets, including proposed rules covering cross-border transactions.
The shift is significant because the risks surrounding digital assets increasingly extend beyond price volatility. Users can lose funds through phishing, fake investment schemes, impersonation, fraudulent websites and social-engineering attacks that persuade victims to disclose passwords, authentication codes or wallet information.
For exchanges operating across multiple African markets, the challenge is therefore not limited to protecting digital infrastructure. It also involves ensuring that users can distinguish legitimate communications from fraudulent ones and understand the consequences of making transactions that may be difficult or impossible to reverse.
Binance said it invests about $300 million annually in compliance and has nearly 1,500 employees working in compliance-related roles. The company said its systems intercepted approximately $10.53 billion in potential fraud, scams and unusual activity between 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. These figures are company-reported and form part of Binance’s broader argument that compliance infrastructure is becoming a central component of digital-asset market development.
The exchange also said it processed more than 71,000 law-enforcement requests and supported authorities in the recovery or seizure of more than $130 million in illicit funds. Binance has separately reported that it processed more than 71,000 law-enforcement requests during 2025 and helped authorities seize more than $752 million in illicit assets globally, illustrating the scale of the compliance systems being deployed by the company.
The difference between the two figures reflects different reporting periods and methodologies, but both point to the increasing role of crypto platforms in investigations involving digital transactions. Binance maintains a dedicated law-enforcement request system through which authorised government agencies can seek information for criminal investigations.
For African regulators, the expansion of these systems comes as virtual assets move closer to formal financial supervision. Kenya’s draft Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations, developed by the National Treasury in consultation with the Central Bank of Kenya and the Capital Markets Authority, are intended to operationalise the country’s 2025 legislation and establish a framework for licensing and regulating providers.
Ghana is following a similar direction. The Bank of Ghana, Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Intelligence Centre have established a regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers, with requirements covering areas such as consumer protection, anti-money-laundering controls and cybersecurity. The Bank of Ghana has said the country’s virtual-asset ecosystem has expanded to more than three million users, underscoring the scale of the market regulators are now seeking to supervise.
In South Africa, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority has been responsible for the licensing and supervision of crypto-asset service providers, while the National Treasury and South African Reserve Bank have also been developing rules for cross-border crypto transactions. The proposed framework reflects concerns around financial flows, reporting and the potential use of digital assets to circumvent existing financial controls.
Against this regulatory backdrop, Binance is placing greater emphasis on education as part of its security strategy. Samukele Mkhize, Compliance Head for Binance Africa, said security and trust would be important to the continued development of crypto use on the continent.
“Security is what earns trust and trust is what allows crypto to keep growing in Africa,” Mkhize said, arguing that user protection needs to be incorporated from the beginning rather than treated as an afterthought.
Binance said it has provided free crypto education to more than 400,000 people across Africa through its Masterclass programme. The company’s Binance Academy also provides free educational material covering subjects including phishing, fraudulent websites and other common forms of digital-asset scams. Binance has previously reported reaching more than 400,000 Africans through its education initiatives, making financial literacy a long-running component of its African market strategy.
The company’s latest guidance focuses on relatively simple measures. Users are encouraged to activate two-factor authentication, create an anti-phishing code, verify Binance websites and social-media accounts through its official verification tool, and use withdrawal address whitelists where appropriate. Binance also advises users to be cautious when confronted with urgent demands for money or personal information and to report suspicious activity to the exchange and relevant law-enforcement authorities.
The emphasis on slowing down before acting reflects a wider challenge facing digital finance. Many cyber-enabled financial crimes do not require sophisticated attacks against an institution’s core infrastructure. Instead, they exploit human behaviour through urgency, impersonation and misplaced trust.
For Africa’s rapidly digitising economies, that distinction is becoming increasingly important. Mobile money, online banking, digital platforms and virtual assets are expanding the number of financial transactions conducted through connected devices, creating new opportunities for financial inclusion while also widening the surface exposed to cybercrime.
The regulatory response is consequently moving beyond the question of whether crypto assets should be permitted. Regulators are increasingly focusing on who can provide services, how customer information and assets are protected, how suspicious transactions are identified, how digital platforms cooperate with authorities and what recourse consumers have when fraud occurs.
That transition could make cybersecurity a more important determinant of trust in Africa’s emerging digital-asset markets. For exchanges, compliance spending and technical controls may increasingly be assessed alongside their ability to educate users. For regulators, the challenge will be to build rules that address financial crime and consumer risks without creating barriers that push legitimate digital-asset activity into less transparent channels.
As crypto adoption continues to develop across the continent, the security conversation is therefore moving closer to the centre of the market. The question is no longer simply how quickly Africans can adopt digital assets, but whether the institutions supporting that adoption can build enough trust, oversight and user awareness to make growth sustainable.
