Zimswitch: a quick refresher on what it is and what it does

The Reserve Bank this afternoon issued a statement that made Zimswitch the national payment switch. This means that EcoCash will be relegated to just being wallet and will have to use Zimswitch as the universal transaction hub. Now, as more information about this comes out, and we see how EcoCash responds to this. Let’s have a little refresher on what Zimswitch is, how it came about and what they do.

I’m sure many of you are already familiar with Zimswitch and their services. But with every new directive issued, we seem to have to brush up on what the new thing that will be talked about, is all about.

What is ZIMSWITCH?

Founded in 1994 as a collaboration between Beverley, Barclays, CABS, Founder’s Building Society, Stanbic, and ZimBank (ZB Bank) (CBZ and Time Bank joined in 1995 and 1997 respectively). Zimswitch Technologies Private Limited is Zimbabwe’s sole electronic funds switch and clearing house.

They process domestic card based ATM (Automated Teller Machine), POS (Point of Sale) and EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer).

Timeline:

• 1994 Founding of Zimswitch
• 1995 Processing of the first Zimswitch transaction
• 1996 The first Zimswitch POS transaction is processed
• 2001 Incorporated as Zimswitch Technologies Private Limited
• 2006 Zimswitch makes the move to Postilion switch for greater efficiency
• 2012 Introduced credit push to bank and credit push to mobile also known as ZIPIT
• 2013 Introduced Vpayments, for internet shopping

Zimswitch currently has 24 members:

• Africa Century
• Agribank
• Banc ABC
• CABS
• CBZ Holdings
• Ecobank
• FBC Bank Limited
• FBC Building Society
• First Capital
• Get Bucks Microfinance
• Empower Bank
• Metbank
• MyCash
• NBS
• Nedbank
• NMB
• Standard Chartered
• Steward Bank
• POSB
• Stanbic Bank
• Success Microfinance Bank
• ZB Bank
• Telecash
• OneMoney

Zimswitch services

There are over 400 Zimswitch enabled ATMs countywide

There are over 100 000 Zimswitch Point of sale machines nationwide.

ZIPIT (Zimswitch Instant Payment Interchanger Technology) any mobile user on any network with a bank account can send and receive money using ZIPIT from any other bank provided both banks are on ZIPIT.

Vpayments is Zimswitch’s online payment service

This was just a brief run through of what Zimswitch is and what services they offer. If you want something more in-depth can check out ZimSwitch: an update on the ZimSwitch Shared Services (ZSS) platform

Buy the report we did on the payments space in Zimbabwe (2018)