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Delegates follow proceedings during the Zimswitch Payment Conference in Victoria Falls at the weekend

Leonard Ncube in Victoria Falls
ZIMBABWE recorded a 372 percent growth in electronic money transactions in 2017 to 165 million compared to 34 million transactions in the previous year, statistics from Zimswitch Technologies show.

Zimswitch Technologies is a local technological company that provides interoperability for local financial payment systems, having been formed in 1994.

Speaking at a Zimswitch Payment Conference in Victoria Falls at the weekend, deputy director Mr Zabron Chilakalaka said more Zimbabweans were embracing plastic money, taking into consideration the prevailing cash shortages in the economy.

He said in terms of monetary contribution, transactions made through 60 000 Point of Sale (POS) machines and 550 Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) across the country amounted to $5.1 billion out of an average total of $6.6 billion transacted.

“The Zimswitch dollar value stands at $6.6 billion. In the market we have 4.3 million cards in circulation and every month we see two million of these active on the Zimswitch platform,” said Mr Chilakalaka.

He said 60 percent of the 60 000 POS terminals across the country were also active every month, a sign that the plastic money system had been well received by consumers.

“In terms of number of transactions in the year 2017, we did 165.1 million compared to 34.9 million in 2016. That is a jump of 372 percent,” said Mr Chilakalaka.

Regarding national payment statistics, he said, 75 percent of transactions were made through Zimswitch.

This, he said, makes a total of 160.4 million transactions out of a national total of 214.9 million transactions during the same period.

“Value wise, we switched 77 percent accounting for $5.1 billion of the $6.6 billion transactions done in the year,” said Mr Chilakalaka.

He said his organisation was happy that one of its products, Zipit, had accounted for 1.1 billion transactions as it was being embraced by many.

Mr Chilakalaka called on financial institutions to integrate their services. Zipit’s credit push was recognised as the first runner-up in the money transfer category at the super-brand awards in 2017 with Zimswitch being voted 11th in the business to business brand.

@ncubeleon