Barclays Zimbabwe says it has stopped all local electronic payments on the Visa card platform, owing to cash shortages within the local economy.
Most local banks are struggling for liquidity and are under close scrutiny from the central bank over how they handle cash.
Valeta Mthimkhulu, a senior executive at Barclays Zimbabwe, explained, "When you use your Visa card locally, as a bank we need to settle the transaction account through our offshore Nostro account. Given the issues around foreign currency and exchange developments in Zimbabwe at the moment, it didn't make sense anymore to pay for local purchases using (an) offshore account."
However, Barclays Zimbabwe's Visa card is still enabled to process transactions when outside the country.
The bank is now requesting that depositors avail another card for local payments using the Zimswitch platform that cross-links finance institutions, enabling other organisations (such as supermarkets and retailers with PoS facilities) to process payments from bank cards.
Samuel Matsekete, Chief Finance Officer at Barclays Zimbabwe said despite the dropping of Visa payments inside Zimbabwe, online banking was soaring on the bank's internet banking enabled platforms. "Online banking is coming up and growing and payments on our internet banking platforms account for just below half of transactions. Online shopping is strongly coming up while other uses for online transactions include transfers and bill payments."
Zimbabwean banks are increasingly foraying into mobile banking and are involved in ventures to digitalise operations. This is in line with trends in other developed and developing markets where banks are reducing manual transactions in a bid to cut down on costs.
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