Earlier this year the government promised to give Civil Servants a US$75 pay raise. Whilst the civil servants got a raise it required them to open up NOSTRO accounts and get FCA cards they would transact with (i.e not exactly US$ now)…
The government has promised that pensioners will also be getting FCA cards in the near future. The only way for civil servants and pensioners to extract value from the money in their accounts was to withdraw the money which would be converted to ZW$. Thankfully, banks have upgraded their payments infrastructure to allow processing of NOSTRO payments according to Zimswitch.
To date banks have been re-configuring their payments infrastructure to support the local payments of goods and services in USD via Zimswitch enabled Point of Sale machines. A number of merchants in different parts of the country both big and small retailers are now accepting Nostro POS purchases. The service is attracting volumes especially from civil servants and pensioners who are now able to spend their USD Covid 19 allowance without having the hassle of converting their funds back to the local currency for transacting purposes.
In order to make it easier to find out where NOSTRO cards are accepted, Zimswitch has listed merchants accepting NOSTRO POS purchases across the country. The list will be continuously updated as more retailers/businesses join the merchant network with NOSTRO POS machines.
What’s your take?