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R19 and a Click: How Temu and Shein’s Popularity Fuels a New Wave of SMS Fraud in SA
If you’ve ordered from Temu or Shein recently, you know the drill: a flurry of SMS updates from Buffalo Logistics tracking your parcel’s journey from warehouse to doorstep. What you might not know is that fraudsters are now weaponising that familiaritysending fake messages demanding tiny payments to harvest your credit card details.
Capitec’s Head of Financial Crime, Nick Harris, issued the warning on Cape Talk, describing how criminals are exploiting the e-commerce boom. “If you’re like me, there’s every second day some other unmarked parcel arriving from Buffalo Couriers,” Harris said. “They [fraudsters] have hooked onto this.”
The R19 Trap
The scam is deceptively simple. Victims receive an SMS appearing to come from Buffalo Logistics, Temu and Shein’s primary local delivery partner. The message states that a small outstanding paymenttypically around R19is required before the parcel can be released for delivery. A link is provided to complete the transaction.
“Your parcel’s ready for delivery, you just need to make payment,” the fake message might read.
Clicking the link leads to a convincing payment page. But the victim isn’t paying a courier fee. “They’re basically just harvesting your credit card details,” Harris warned. Once captured, those details are used for card-not-present fraud, leaving victims to discover unauthorised transactions on their statements.
Not Just Couriers: The FICA Variant
Harris noted that this tactic extends beyond e-commerce. Fraudsters also exploit regulatory compliance anxiety with fake FICA and account suspension SMSes. These messages claim the recipient’s bank account is about to be frozen due to non-compliance and urge immediate action via a link.
In July 2025, Standard Bank flagged one such scam sent to a MyBroadband reader: “Your Standard Bank account is scheduled to be blocked in 2hrs due to fica failure update.” The bank confirmed it was not an official communication.
How to Spot the Scam
Both banks and security experts point to consistent red flags:
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Grammatical errors and awkward phrasing are hallmarks of fraudulent messages.
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Spoofed web addresses often resemble legitimate domains but are subtly altered. However, as Standard Bank notes, scammers sometimes use completely unrelated domainsanother giveaway.
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Requests for card details on pages masquerading as banking or courier portals. Legitimate entities will not ask for full card numbers or PINs via these channels.
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Mismatched communication settings. In the FICA scam cited, the recipient had their Standard Bank notifications set to email-onlyany SMS claiming to be from the bank was automatically suspect.
The Bottom Line
The Temu and Shein parcel scam works because it feels plausible. South Africans are receiving real Buffalo Logistics updates daily; a single fake among them is easy to miss. But the golden rule of digital safety remains: never click a link in an unsolicited SMS. If you’re unsure about a delivery or account status, navigate directly to the official website or app.
As Harris put it: fraudsters are opportunistic, not sophisticated. They follow the traffic. Right now, that traffic is following cheap Chinese imports into South African homes. Don’t let them follow it into your bank account.
{Source: BusinessTech}
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