Vpayments is an online payments platform run by Zimswitch. Its purpose is to allow holders of Zimswitch debit cards to make online purchases and payments to participating Zimbabwean businesses in the same way that people do with international payment cards like Visa and Mastercard. At the moment, for those who want to make payments, the service is only limited to CABS, CBZ, FBC (both the bank and building society), POSB and ZB Bank customers.
The following is a guide for signing up onto the platform. It is divided into two parts; the first is for those who want to use the platform as buyers and the second for businesses which want to become merchants.
Buyers
Ever wanted to reduce the number of steps required to complete a Zimbabwean online payment e.g. doing away with the need to move money from your bank to your mobile wallet before you can pay? Vpayments allows you to do just that—you sign up with your Zimswitch card and are then able to make payments directly from your bank to various Zimbabwean online merchants and billers. Most organisations which accept payment via Paynow also take Vpayments through the same platform.
What you need to get started
All you need to sign up to the Vpayments platform is a card from one of the above-mentioned financial institutions and a working email address. One of the later signing up steps requires that you have access to a statement of the last few transactions in your bank account, so a mobile banking account would also come in very handy. If you, however, do not have a convenient means of accessing your account statement, no worries, you can still make a quick dash to your nearest banking branch.
Provide your details
To get started go to the Vpayments customer sign up page (https://secure.zss.co.zw/vpayments/Customer/Register). All that is required on this page are your details which include your full name and title in addition to your email address. You must use your own working personal email address. An email will be sent to this address for confirmation. Follow all instructions on the page and fill in all the required information. Choose a password, agree to the terms and conditions and click Register.
Add a card
Take out your debit card issued by one of the enabled institutions. Choose your bank on the page and enter the number printed on it—usually on the front—including the expiry date if your card happens to have one. Please note that for those cards which have the bank account number printed on them, you have to enter the other number. Once you click register, an email will be sent to your provided address.
Confirm your email address
Login to your email account and click on the link sent to you by Zimswitch to confirm that the email address you provided indeed belongs to you. If you cannot see the email yet you can do one of the following: check in your spam folder, wait a minute or two or else refresh your email client’s inbox.
Confirm your card
After confirming your email address, you now have to confirm that the card belongs to you. Just after clicking on the confirmation link in the received email, Zimswitch will withdraw a random figure between 0 and 99 cents from your account. Look for a recent bank statement either by physically visiting your nearest bank branch or using a more convenient means like mobile banking or your bank’s mobile app. Check for this small debit in your bank statement and note the amount. It should have “Vpayments” in the description. After this, visit the link from your previous email from Zimswitch and then enter the random debit amount on the page to confirm that the card indeed belongs to you.
You are now ready to make payments
After successfully signing up, you are then ready to make payments to merchants and billers registered on Vpayments or Paynow (including topup.co.zw)
Merchants
You can also sign up on Vpayments to be on the receiving end of the online transactions. Sellers can view the Vpayments service as a kind of online Zimswitch POS system that allows you to receive payments from cardholders. One very easy way of receiving Vpayments is doing so via the Paynow platform but if you would rather do without the middleman carry on reading.
What you need
To become a merchant you will need to sign up through a bank. You can either sign up as a standalone or a sub-merchant. A standalone merchant account is the standard one while a sub-merchant account allows you to sign up under a “super merchant” which is a big merchant which signs up smaller ones.
Sign up as a standalone merchant
You would need to first of all contact one of the integrated banks of which at the time of writing the only prominently displayed were CABS, CBZ and FBC. Ask for a Vpayments merchant account from one of these three banks. The processes and requirements will depend on the particular bank but you should ultimately end up with the following:
- A signed merchant agreement between you and the bank
- A Vpayments merchant account including a login email address and password.
Sign up as a sub-merchant
Sub merchants need to have or open a CBZ account (standard or corporate). The next step is to choose a super merchant and ask to sign up under them. Contact Zimswitch at vpayments[at]zss.co.zw and ask for a list of super merchants. You should end up with the following:
- A signed merchant agreement between you and the super merchant
- A Vpayments merchant account including a login email address and password.
Integrate with your website
The final step is getting a developer to integrate Vpayments with your site or app. If you are a developer yourself download the documentation here (https://secure.zss.co.zw/lab/vpayments/Content/Vpayments_API_and_Developer_Documentation.pdf).
Remember that you can still receive payments via Vpayments even if you don’t own a website, or a Vpayments merchant account for that matter, through Paynow.
