ZIPIT is on a roll. After announcing the (delayed) launch of ZIPIT smart they have gone further to start chattering about a partnership with Mastercard. Thus far details on what exactly the partnership involves are scant but most observers are optimistic about the development. ZIPIT’s apparent quest to push out mobile money is soldiering on despite its inherent shortcomings. While many continue to label each move as the death of Ecocash perhaps there is enough space for everyone in the transacting space.
MasterCard
MasterCard is one of the world’s biggest transaction platforms, perhaps only second to VISA. They have made themself synonymous with banking and ZIPIT certainly stands a lot to gain. Of course, MasterCard is well known to Zimbabweans as many banks use that, particularly in Foreign Currency denominated prepaid transacting cards. Ecocash also uses a Mastercard debit card. Banks were pushed by the RBZ, who perhaps had the foresight, kindly asked that banks implement EMV cards which enable contactless payments as soon as possible. To be fair to the banks these may not have made cost from a cost perspective with the information they had at the time.
What does this mean?
In time ZIPIT is likely to reveal what exactly they will be partnering with MasterCard on but we can expect some sort of card perhaps with the contactless transacting technology. They play is likely to make ZIPIT ubiquitous when combined with the ZIPIT smart. It would be naive for ZIPIT to not cover card transactions considering the landscape and the possibility of low adoption of their merchant system. It’s no secret that Zimbabweans are wary of the ZIPIT move and those are the same people running businesses For ZIPIT to succeed as the national payments switch it needs to match or improve the ease of transacting that mobile money has established in Zimbabwe.
Sticking point
ZIPIT has made welcome strides for the banked but there is still that huge unbanked segment of the nation. What’s in it for them? Well so far ZIPIT has no answer and the mobile money providers don’t seem to be moving as yet. Perhaps they are still gathering themselves after the clipping of their wings. So for the unbanked, it is largely business as usual with a lower transacting limit as things stand.
Outlook
MasterCard comes with a wealth of experience in payments solutions, gateways and small business solutions. All of these were highlighted as areas that ZIPIT will be working on with MasterCard. This will help ease concerns about ZIPIT’s ability and capacity to handle large volumes. Even Ecocash increasingly had trouble dealing with its transacting volumes and this resulted in well-documented customer service complaints and fallout.
With the new deadline, 30th September, for the national payments switch activation fast approaching Zimswitch has a lot of work to do in a short space of time. We will surely hear more about this soon.
