Will ZimSwitch Online unlock Zimbabwe’s E-Commerce potential?

In the last decade, mobile money has managed to evolve to ensure that Zimbabweans have access to financial services in a country where banking services were traditionally reserved for the formally employed minority. Many a time we have emphasised this impact but it’s important to note that over time the banks have also pulled their socks and are slowly gaining traction.

The data shows that the growth rate of mobile money accounts has been slowing down in recent years. *Part of the slowdown can be attributed to saturation, and another could be that the people experiencing financial inclusion via mobile money eventually want to move on to banks which offer more flexibility with higher transacting limits along with potential access to credit and so ultimately the gap between mobile money accounts and debit cards has been narrowing in recent years.

*It also helps that national policy is currently in favour of growth of traditional banking since their belief is that the stricter KYC requirements and their ability to oversee the activity in that domain will lead to less fraud and tampering with the economy.

Ultimately the limitations of mobile money have become most pronounced in the eCommerce space where reduced usage, restrictive transaction limits along with historically hard to come by APIs have meant that mobile money hasn't been as widely adopted for online commerce.