Zimswitch is working on introducing a new Electronic Funds Transfer system in the Zimbabwean market called ZEEPAY (Zimswitch Enhanced Electronic Payments).

The main objective of this initiative is for Zimswitch to become a fully Automated Clearing House by complementing the existing ISO8583 Card Switch and to modernize the local EFT payments space through a global standard (ISO20022). Zimbabwean Financial Institutions, Corporates, Government organizations and the National Payments Division of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe are in total support of these objectives.

The new EFT payments platform will support the interchange of credits and debits (single or bulk) in batch or real-time modes by Zimswitch participants.

FUNCTIONALITIES

• Same day value and future dated processing and settlement of EFTs
• Clearing and Settlement
• Query and Dispute Management
• Billing Services

To date 6 Zimswitch participants and 6 organizations are at various stages of automating the integration between their systems and ZEEPAY. The target go-live date is by middle of Q2 2020.

PAYMENTS OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

In 2019, Cash and cheque volume contributions was less than 1% of all payments volume, thus at least 99% of all payments were made through electronic means. There are 5 electronic payment options available to Zimbabweans which are: ATM, Internet, Mobile, Point of Sale (POS) and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS). Over 96% of the electronic transaction volumes are distributed between only two channels; Mobile and POS.

The banks continue to deploy POS machines with the figures increased from 99,935 in December 2018 to 121,413 in December 2019, a 21% increment. The debit cards increase from 4,734,299 to 5,625,031 which is almost an increase of 1million additional cards into the market. There were 6.54 million active mobile financial services.

By

TERENCE MANHANGA and
MICHAEL CHAURUKA

SACHA NEWSLETTER -JUNE 2020