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DUDUZILE RAMELA: The South African consumer is shifting beyond how much they spend to how deliberate they are about spending decisions, prioritising value, planning carefully and adapting payment as well as purchasing behaviour to changing realities. That’s according to the 2026 SpendTrend report, the fourth annual edition by Discovery [Bank] and Visa. The joint report looks at consumer spending behaviour – national and city spend trends.
We look at some of the salient outcomes now with Discovery CEO Hylton Kallner. Thank you very much for your time this morning. Maybe let’s start with how the report is put together. Would it have looked at events from February 28th?
HYLTON KALLNER: The report is a massive undertaking by Visa and Discovery Bank. It spans five years from 2021 to 2025 and looks at 12 million credit-card users and 2.6 billion transactions.
So it’s the biggest quantitative analysis of spending in South Africa. It’s also supplemented by 1 000 surveys that are done across South Africa to understand the qualitative trends that are underpinning the analyses that we see.
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So it’s really kind of an informative survey that brings together all of the macro analytics that Visa facilitates, and then all of the behavioural elements and macro analyses from Discovery Bank.
DUDUZILE RAMELA: We’ve got 10 key trends from SpendTrend26. Maybe let’s start with online sports betting overtaking in-person gambling spend. This is something that is growing in the country. What did you record here?
HYLTON KALLNER: I think it’s been well documented, the increase in spend on online gambling and sports betting. It is something we’ve been concerned about and monitoring very, very closely from a Discovery Bank perspective.
For the bank that’s founded on making people financially healthier, the emergence of sports betting is a negative risk for us, and so we’ve been quite clear that this is something that should be monitored very closely and we should be protecting our clients where they are at risk.
So we’ve seen an increase in spend. Among our client base we’ve observed a shift online, but also a reduction of about 40% in cases and the majority of our clients’ spending around large sports events themselves, indicating a preference for entertainment.
So where we do observe negative behaviours we’re working actively to educate clients to put in place guardrails. We think that there’s room for regulation to ensure that South Africans more generally are protected. It’s a trend that comes through clearly and one that we think should be monitored and addressed over time.
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DUDUZILE RAMELA: I thought this was quite interesting – prescribed weight-management medicines emerging as a new health spending category. Please expand on that for us.
HYLTON KALLNER: It’s a fascinating. It’s a fascinating insight. We’ve seen that, through the respondents that we surveyed, 14% of respondents, one in 7, indicate that at least one person or more in their household is currently using a prescription weight-loss drug, predominantly GLP-1s. That for us is an incredibly important trend in the way that people are treating weight loss and using these drugs.
It also means that they are re-budgeting in their households to be able to support these often very expensive drugs.
But I think the most interesting insight from it is that people are living more healthily as a result. We’ve seen the majority of these households increase their spend on healthy food. We’ve seen them reduce spend on takeouts, reduce spend on alcohol, and their overall grocery bill is going down as well.
So it is kind of the two elements in combination – eating more healthily in general and living a healthier lifestyle with the introduction of the prescription weight-loss drugs themselves. That’s an important insight for healthcare practitioners, pharmacy companies and for retailers and takeout restaurants.
Read: The appetite for GLP-1 drugs grows
DUDUZILE RAMELA: I’d like us to spend a little time on this one. Spending edged past inflation. So in 2025 consumer spending grew 0.8% above inflation for the first time since 2022. The second half of this year, in particular, was really good to South Africa and South Africans.
Then we start the year [from] February 28th. The conflict, which is showing no signs of abating overseas, is said to have a big impact on inflation. Talk to us about this dynamic, especially when we look ahead in terms of what you see here.
HYLTON KALLNER: I think there are definitely green shoots emerging in all there was in the SpendTrend analysis, where we saw that that spend, as you say, exceeded inflation by 0.8%. That’s the first time since 2022. That was a really positive outcome and the result of a series of rate reductions that came through over 2025.
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At the same time, I think the current environment is creating a very nervous consumer. While you say they are focused on deliberate spend, smarter spend, I think the natural kind of result of the global uncertainty that we see in the geopolitical [situation] is that consumers will continue to be very disciplined, deliberate and value conscious.
And I think in uncertain times, the tendency is to focus very much on value and use the tools that are available to budget more tightly and more discriminatorily.
DUDUZILE RAMELA: Thank you so much for your time this morning.
Of course, our listeners can engage with this report on your website, because there’s also a fascinating insight into how we are using AI to make shopping decisions – even more when you speak on value.
Discovery CEO Hylton Kallner, thank you so much for your time this morning.
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