ZIMBABWE’S payments ecosystem faces collapse as players in
the sector are failing to pay licensed and maintenance fees to foreign service
providers, Standardbusines has established.
In recent weeks, the banking systems, which heavily rely on
telecoms infrastructure, have come under strain with services being constantly
disrupted.
Zimbabwe Information and Communication Technologies (ZICT)
chairman Jacob Mutisi said the country received all its internet bandwidth from
outside Zimbabwe.
“All payment systems in Zimbabwe have a foreign link and
that foreign link has to be paid for in foreign currency, so (the shortages)
are affecting all the payment systems.
“I would not be surprised if ZimSwitch was going to start
being affected and Paynet was only recently down,” he said.
“If there is any data transmission or something like that
the internet terminates in Europe, the same way with the mobile systems.
“So in the process there are also international links that
come into play.” Paynet, a local electronic payments processing system, was
down on March 12 after their licensor suspended services due to non-payment.
This affected the 22 banks it serves and the matter was
resolved two days later after the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe allocated the
company some foreign currency. An intensifying bank note shortage in Zimbabwe has forced
the transacting public to adapt to electronic forms of payment.
According to the 2019 monetary policy, an aggregate value
of 6,4 million transactions valued at US$85 billion were settled through the
RTGS transaction platform in 2018, up 8% and 38%, respectively, over the prior
period.
Meanwhile, banking industry sources said mobile telephone
operators would continue to face disruptions because they were failing to get
foreign currency to maintain their infrastructure.
Chinese telecom conglomerates Huawei Technologies Co.
Limited and ZTE Corporation as well as Swedish firm Ericsson are the major
suppliers for Zimbabwean operators. Standard
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