The Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) plans to deregister over 500 000 non-compliant SIM cards across the country.

Acting ZICTA Director General Mwenya Mutale addressed the media and said the regulator expects to deactivate SIM cards of people who have not complied with the rule of no more than ten SIM cards per person without just cause.

Mutale added that non-compliant SIM cards will have outgoing call services immediately suspended, but will still be able receive incoming calls.

He warned that those that are still non-compliant by will not be able to make or receive calls, after-which subscribers will have 14 days from the commencement of service suspension to claim their deactivated SIM cards failure to which they will lose their numbers.

Mutale added that the Authority is forced to take this course of action to combat mobile money fraud which hinders progress towards the digital economy.

According to ZICTA, Zambia has continued to record an increase in the use of digital financial services with mobile money transactions increasing to K105.6 billion by the end of last year from K49.6 billion in 2019, representing a 113% increment.

He said the authority is working with mobile service operators to strengthen the SIM card registration exercise.

“We are going to issue a further directive for people to justify why they are having more than 10 SIM cards so that we get to these mobile money scams as we are trying to curb these scams. We have also partnered with law enforcement agencies to combat mobile money scams which have left many mobile money subscribers victims,” said Mutale.