TAURAI MANGUDHLA
Government has terminated its long relationship with Mauritian-owned payment solutions firm Paynet and introduced a manual system after ties were cut over outstanding fees and charges last month.
Last month, Paynet announced an abrupt termination of services to Zimbabwean banks upon demanding payment in hard currency and over a US$500 000 debt.
Zimbabwe last month officially introduced its local dollar as formal tender after demonetising the Zimbabwean dollar 2015, effectively putting an end to a decade-long multiple currency regime.
Accountant-general Daniel Muchemwa yesterday said government is currently using a manual system that has proven efficient and effective although still subject to review.
Muchemwa said a taskforce comprising top government and central bank
officials with expertise in finance, accounting, payment systems, ICT and human resources had been put together to oversee salary payments and development and adoption of a new payment method going forward.
This also comes amid information local banks had done the same with a view to develop their own local solution to be unveiled mid-July.
“We set up a special team made of people from my office, a person from public finance management system that’s our computers and people from the RBZ. Today is a Wednesday, as of Monday we had a meeting and I am confident we don’t need Paynet ever,” Muchemwa said at an ICAZ IPSAS launch yesterday morning in the capital.
“We are over Paynet,” he added.
Muchemwa said government did not struggle to pay June salaries and now even under less pressure to pay July salaries because we agreed that all Paynet “provided was technology and we have people with the computer skills for the technology so we agreed for them to make an interface between the payment system and the RBZ and its working like a clock at
the moment.”
What remains, he added, was for the team which designed the alternative and new system to review and give reports the accountant-general’s office which will in turn look at the reports from a controls perspective next week.
Payserv and Paynet Zimbabwe have instructed their lawyers, Titan Law, to commence legal action against Bankers Association of Zimbabwe and related parties for anti-competitive practices seeking damages of US$100m.
