TINASHE MAKICHI
Zimbabwe’s national payment system, Zimswitch, posted a 45% decrease in transaction volumes last year to ZWL$14.7bnfrom ZWL$26.9bn in 2019 due to the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic induced lockdown measures.
Zimbabwe has recorded more than 32,000 Covid-19 cases and more than 1 000 deaths since March last year.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic saw internet payments surge 926% to ZWL$9bn from ZWL$877m recorded in 2019 as people focused more on settling their obligations through internet payment platforms.
Point of sale transaction value for the period also spiked 500% during the period to ZWL$120bn from ZWL$20bn in 2019 as the use of cash and physical notes became minimal due to the pandemic.
Zimbabweans have in the past few years adopted plastic money among other payment platforms to do business.
However, the adoption of plastic money has seen the local financial sector battling a surge in bank card frauds.
This has seen various people falling victims to card cloning, a new form of cybercrime where the latest cases have seen clients losing their money shortly after transacting either on an Automated Teller Machines or a Point of Sale machine.
Meanwhile, the value of transactions processed through the National Payment Systems (NPS) increased 20.06% to ZW$67.48bn in the week ending November 13, 2020, according to the latest Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe weekly report. Similarly, Real Time Gross Settlement system transactions increased 31.02%, to ZWL$58bn during the week from ZWL$44.28bn in the previous week.
In value terms, NPS transactions were distributed as follows: RTGS, 85.95%; POS, 8.61%; Mobile, 4.85% and ATM, 0.59%.
The week of analysis saw the volume of NPS transactions decline by 15.29% to close at 21.77m transactions, from 25.70m transactions in the preceding week. c
