On 24 October 2025, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced that South Africa has been removed from its grey list — a decision that restores confidence in the country’s financial system and signals measurable progress in compliance reform.

While the announcement has been widely welcomed across financial and regulatory circles, its impact reaches further than banking and enforcement. For the digital identity ecosystem, this moment underscores how transparent, data-driven verification is becoming essential to national and institutional trust.

The reforms that led to South Africa’s delisting — from beneficial ownership reporting to digital data exchange frameworks — have one thing in common: each depends on the integrity of identity data. And as regulators tighten expectations, businesses will need to ensure that their digital identity systems are as strong, traceable, and compliant as the infrastructure that got South Africa off the list.

The context: From grey listing to reform

When South Africa was placed on the FATF grey list in February 2023, it was a wake-up call. The decision reflected shortcomings in anti–money laundering and counter-terrorism controls, including limited visibility into beneficial ownership and weak information sharing between agencies.

Over the next two years, government institutions — led by SARS, the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), and the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) — moved quickly to close those gaps. New beneficial ownership disclosure rules, data-sharing legislation, and a digital traveller management system were introduced to improve transparency and coordination.

These reforms have done more than satisfy regulatory requirements. They’ve strengthened the underlying identity infrastructure that allows financial systems to operate with integrity. Accurate, verifiable identity data is now central to how South Africa prevents illicit financial activity and builds trust across sectors.

“This achievement shows that identity data isn’t just a compliance tool — it’s a national asset,” says

Craig Hills, Managing Director at WhoYou

Why this matters for digital identity

South Africa’s FATF delisting reinforces what many in the industry already know — compliance now begins with identity. The ability to accurately verify and authenticate individuals and entities determines how effectively institutions can prevent fraud, meet AML obligations, and build customer trust.

As regulators place greater emphasis on transparency and traceability, organisations need solutions that make verification seamless and compliant at the same time. This is where WhoYou plays a pivotal role.

WhoYou integrates directly into customer systems, enabling real-time identity checks through biometric verification, document authentication, and data validation — all within a single, secure workflow. By automating these processes, it helps institutions reduce onboarding friction, eliminate manual errors, and maintain continuous compliance with evolving FATF and FIC standards.

The opportunity for business

South Africa’s removal from the FATF grey list restores global confidence — and creates space for innovation. For financial institutions, fintechs, and other regulated entities, this moment signals a chance to strengthen both compliance and customer experience.

With trusted digital identity systems in place, onboarding can become faster, verification more accurate, and reporting more transparent. By using verification tools from vendors like WhoYou, businesses can align with international AML standards while improving how customers interact, authenticate, and transact in real time.

Sustaining the momentum

South Africa’s removal from the FATF grey list is a major step forward, but maintaining that progress will require continued collaboration between public and private sectors. The systems that helped restore confidence — from beneficial ownership data to digital verification frameworks — depend on shared access, affordability, and accountability.

Recent developments, however, risk slowing that momentum. As we discussed in our July 2025 article on the Department of Home Affairs’ R10 verification fee, rising costs for real-time identity checks could make compliance less accessible and push institutions back toward slower, less secure methods. That would undercut the very transparency and data reliability that FATF praised in South Africa’s reforms.

As Craig Hills, Managing Director at WhoYou, noted at the time:

“We risk a future where trust and speed are betrayed by cost.”

Sustaining South Africa’s compliance credibility means ensuring that identity verification remains both robust and economically viable. If secure digital identity becomes prohibitively expensive, the country risks undoing the progress that earned its delisting — and weakening the infrastructure that keeps financial systems safe.

A final word

South Africa’s removal from the FATF grey list marks an important milestone. It demonstrates what’s possible when policy, technology, and cooperation align around a common goal: building a transparent, compliant, and secure financial ecosystem.

But progress is fragile. The reforms that restored global confidence must now be maintained through consistent investment in digital identity infrastructure, fair access to verification systems, and continued innovation across the private sector.

The next phase of South Africa’s journey isn’t about avoiding another grey list. It’s about embedding integrity into every transaction, every partnership, and every system that underpins the economy. Sustained trust, not just compliance — will define the country’s success in the years ahead.