South Africa’s middle class is quietly reshuffling their digital spending habits, and the numbers tell a striking story about the rise of AI subscriptions in our consumer economy. Fresh data from Discovery Bank and Visa reveals that artificial intelligence tools are capturing an increasingly significant slice of South African wallet share, fundamentally reshaping how affluent households budget their monthly tech commitments. This isn’t just a passing tech fad—it’s a systematic shift in how our most digitally engaged consumers allocate their money.
The story really came into focus at the launch of the Discovery SpendTrend 2026 report in Johannesburg this week, where executives walked through numbers that should make traditional streaming platforms sit up and pay attention. AI subscription payments surged 125% in volume during 2025, whilst simultaneously becoming the fastest-growing category in the broader subscriptions landscape. That kind of growth trajectory doesn’t happen by accident—it reflects genuine consumer demand and a fundamental recalibration of digital priorities among South Africa’s upper-middle class.
What caught our eye at SA Report was the sheer scale of adoption. 43% of Discovery Bank Visa clients analysed in the report now pay for at least one AI subscription, a figure that would have seemed outlandish just two years ago. This isn’t fringe behaviour amongst tech evangelists anymore; it’s becoming standard practice for a significant portion of South Africa’s higher-income households. The report describes this as consumers moving away from “passively accumulating subscriptions” toward “actively managing them,” which is really code for: people are finally thinking strategically about what they’re paying for.
ChatGPT dominates the paid AI tool space, claiming usage amongst 67% of respondents who shell out for an AI subscription. Google’s Gemini trails at 35% adoption, whilst Microsoft’s Copilot sits at 27%. These aren’t mutually exclusive choices either—consumers are increasingly juggling multiple tools for different tasks, suggesting they’ve identified distinct use cases that justify maintaining several subscriptions simultaneously.
AI subscriptions are reshaping South African consumer spending priorities
The practical applications driving this AI subscription uptake reveal a lot about where real value sits for South African households. 40% of surveyed consumers use AI tools weekly or more for purchasing decisions, turning their phone into a personal shopping assistant that helps navigate our notoriously volatile retail landscape. When we dig into the specifics, the utility becomes obvious: 61% rely on AI for price comparison, 53% for product research and 47% for hunting down deals. In a country where load-shedding and economic pressure have made every rand count, this kind of decision-making support resonates deeply.
Among those who’ve actually made purchases assisted by AI in the past year, 42% specifically used it to find cheaper alternatives, whilst 35% switched brands or retailers based on AI recommendations. Perhaps most tellingly, 35% deployed AI to avoid risky purchases or potential scams—a category that shouldn’t be overlooked when you consider South Africa’s cybercrime challenges. Discovery Bank CEO Hylton Kallner emphasised this safety angle, noting that his institution has achieved an 85% reduction in fraud at the per-purchase level using AI-driven backend systems.
The flipside of this AI subscription explosion is what’s happening to traditional streaming services. This is where the real story gets uncomfortable for Netflix, Showmax and their competitors. Streaming’s share of subscription wallet spending collapsed from 67% in 2023 to just 11% in 2025—a staggering three-year contraction. It’s crucial to note this represents a decline in share of wallet rather than necessarily an absolute drop in streaming consumption, but the trend is undeniable. Other sectors like sports bookings have similarly surrendered territory to the AI wave, forcing content platforms to confront uncomfortable questions about their value proposition.
Yet the streaming decline shouldn’t be misread as consumers abandoning entertainment altogether. Rather, it reflects a broader sophistication in how South Africans now approach subscription management. The old model—where people signed up, forgot about it, and paid indefinitely—is dead. Active management is now the norm, with households pausing and resuming services based on what’s currently available or what their budget allows in any given month. The data proves this behavioural shift isn’t theoretical: streaming and online media services show return rates of around 34%, with between 13% and 30% of users coming back after four to six months.
Food and grocery subscriptions proved far stickier, with 48% of users who paused them eventually returning, and 79% of those resuming within two to three months. That resilience reflects the essential nature of these services compared to entertainment options, which consumers now treat as optional luxuries rather than must-haves. Among those making changes to their subscription portfolios, 46% cited a preference for keeping services only whilst specific content is available, 39% blamed price increases, and 27% pointed to general budget pressure.
Visa South Africa’s Lineshree Moodley suggested this upward trajectory for AI subscriptions will only accelerate as more sophisticated “agentic AI” tools reach mainstream users. These aren’t just chatbots for answering questions—they’re systems designed to actively handle tasks on behalf of users, which could unlock entirely new use cases and justify subscriptions for households that currently haven’t considered AI tools necessary. The question for South African retailers, entertainment platforms and financial services isn’t whether AI subscriptions will continue growing—the data makes that inevitable. The real question is how quickly they’ll adapt their business models to compete for wallet share in this rapidly reconfiguring landscape.