In South Africa’s e-commerce boom, trust beats automation

It starts with a reflex. Scroll, refresh, click, close tab. For millions of South Africans, this daily ritual unfolds not on Amazon or Shein, but on homegrown digital platforms like Takealot, Bash and OneDayOnly. 

Online shopping in South Africa is projected to reach R130-billion in value by the end of 2025, almost 10% of total retail and growing 10 times faster than traditional stores, according to a World Wide Worx study. 

The big guns have gone digital. Shoprite’s Sixty60 has become a cultural shorthand for on-demand delivery. Pick n Pay’s online sales grew more than 70% last year. Woolies Dash grew by 41.6% this year. Nearly half of all the new sales TFG gained in South Africa in its 2025 financial year, came from its Bash platform. 

TFG's Bash aspirations

Source: TFG annual report 2025

As the contest for speed and discounts intensifies, trust is emerging as the real currency online.

Local trust, global competition

Global heavyweights have also parachuted in. Amazon’s South African site, launched in 2024, now stretches from electronics to groceries. Shein and Temu crashed the fashion party, racking up R7.3-billion in sales by the end of 2024 – nearly 40% of all online apparel sales, according to a study by the Localisation Support Fund. 

Read more: SA’s R130bn e-commerce boom sparks fears of retail sector job losses

Yet South Africans remain wary: 46% of respondents from the World Wide Worx study said they trust local sites more than international ones, while only one in 10 prefers global names. More than half haven’t touched Shein or Temu, discouraged by delivery delays, customs charges and the sinking feeling that what arrives may not match what was ordered.

Takealot remains the country’s digital department store, with 45% of consumers naming it their go-to, the World Wide Worx study found. Checkers Sixty60, Pick n Pay and Woolworths follow close behind. OneDayOnly, modest but distinct, continues to thrive in a niche it has all but invented.

The manual engine that refuses to die 

OneDayOnly is the contrarian in the room. Every 24 hours, the site reloads with up to 300 new deals. Nothing is algorithmically assembled. Each product, price and description is checked by hand.

“It is crazy, crazy, crazy hustling, finding deals, negotiating,” said Laurian Venter, the company’s sales director, describing the relentless churn behind the daily refresh.

While competitors use scraping bots to trawl the internet for price comparisons, OneDayOnly relies on its people. “We actually tried using Google’s scraping tool at a stage and we just found that there was such a big gap, it just missed so much. It basically turned into chaos and panic,” Daniela Contatore, a division manager at OneDayOnly, said. 

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Instead, teams manually open browser tabs, compare like-for-like products, and haggle with suppliers to hit the day’s best price. “If all else fails after we’ve tried all of those aspects, unfortunately you have to reject the deal and walk away,” Contatore said. “At the end of the day it’s quite simple. Our goal here is to make customers really feel like a big deal.”

This process extends to quality control. Samples of lesser-known, generic products are ordered, tested and dissected. “We want to ensure that our listing clearly communicates what the customer will receive,” said OneDayOnly import division manager Danielle Martincich. “It’s about managing expectations and ensuring the perceived value aligns with the actual product.”

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In a market hooked on speed, OneDayOnly’s manual model stands apart – and seems to deliver. Its simple value promise is paying off, as the team tracks progress towards saving South Africans R10-billion by the end of the decade. 

The logistics frontier

Takealot Group, which hosts South Africa’s fan favourite e-commerce platform, launched a new business unit this year, signalling its growing appetite for scale. 

Through its Takealot Fulfilment Solutions arm, the company has rebuilt its supply chain, offering warehousing, freight forwarding and courier services to both its own marketplace and external sellers.

“You’re a logistic company with a front end and you skim some margin from the front end,” Takealot CEO Frederik Zietsman said at a recent industry gathering hosted by The Open Letter. 

Intermediation platforms like Takealot, he said, allow small businesses to grow by giving them reach and access they couldn’t achieve alone. “If I got fired tomorrow,” he joked, “I’d start selling on our marketplace. That’s the best way to build a brand and customer base.”

Read more: Shein, Temu strike Takealot where it hurts as e-commerce giant grapples with loss

That marketplace now hosts about 16,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, accounting for roughly 60% to 62% of Takealot’s total gross merchandise value, according to Zietsman. By using its buying power to secure better freight rates, the company passes those savings to sellers and aims to cut out mid-mile costs between distribution centres. 

Beyond efficiency, Takealot is also leaning into inclusion. Its personal shopper programme turns informal traders into micro-retailers, earning commission for facilitating orders in rural or less-connected communities.

Zietsman said Takealot’s research into e-commerce barriers led the team to models in Colombia and Kenya. “To build trust, you need community,” he explained. 

“We deployed personal shoppers in informal and rural areas. What these people do is they’ve got social capital and they leverage that social capital within their network, whether it’s church, school, hobbies to sell on behalf of the community.”

Regulators catch up, slowly

South Africa’s legal system is still running behind the e-commerce surge. The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, the Consumer Protection Act and the Protection of Personal Information Act cover most of the basics but rarely keep pace with the pace of online trade.

“We have to be a little more sober around how regulatory frameworks start thinking about e-commerce,” said Zietsman, pointing out that current laws “don’t really contemplate or understand” the digital economy.

The government has started to close loopholes, notably by removing VAT exemptions on low-value imports. Still, scholars warn that consumer protection remains fragmented. 

A study by Dr Olubunmi Obihoa, a senior lecturer of business law at Sol Plaatje University, and Professor Paul Masumbe, head of Walter Sisulu University’s School of Law, argues that “consumer protection for consumers engaged in e-commerce transactions in South Africa has not been given holistic consideration”. 

Read more: Think before you click — Consumer ombudsman warns against pitfalls of doing business online

The World Wide Worx report calls the shift to online retail “a structural reality that will shape South African commerce for the rest of the decade”.

The survey found that 74% or 73.6% of respondents report that their e-commerce operations are currently generating positive returns. Specifically, 42.3% report being “very profitable”, and 31.3% report being “somewhat profitable”.

Most consumers buy from local platforms frequently, with 77% reporting shopping at least once a month or more. This confidence is underpinned by a reduction in traditional online shopping anxieties. Fewer people fear that financial information can be stolen, down 5.2% from 2023, or that they won’t get what they paid for, down 4.7%. 

But the competition between local and international e-commerce platforms is not over. Amazon is embedding itself further. Shein and Temu will adjust to new tax realities. And the next generation of consumers will demand both speed and conscience. In that race, the bots may win on scale and efficiency, but it seems that in South Africa, humans are still winning on trust. DM