New ZW$35k limit for mobile money is a decent improvement – Here’s how RBZ and service providers can make it consumer-friendly

So yesterday, it was announced that the ZW$5000 daily limit for transacting has been lifted. In its place will be a ZW$35 000 weekly limit which you can exhaust in one day if you want.

Whilst this is an improvement on what was in place there are still too many potential problems that could arise from these new limits.

The first problem I see is that of reaching your limit whilst transacting in batches. One of the new restrictions set in place is that mobile money users are restricted to ZW$5,000 limits per transactions. This means that if you want to buy something for $22,000 you’ll have to transact 5 times! Yuhp 5 times.

So many things can go wrong. For example 4 transactions can go through and then a mobile money service goes down before the 5th. What happens then?

Another disastrous scenario I foresee involves consumers actually forgetting how close they are to their limits and because the transactions are in batches you might only realise that you have reached your weekly limit after having sent a 2 of the 3 neccesary amounts.

At the moment there is too much friction and the regulators and mobile money service providers will have to fix these aspects otherwise consumers will just use their banks which have a better experience

What can the regulator do?

Remove the ridiculous ZW$5,000 per transaction limit. It doesn’t serve a clear purpose and will only serve to make for more errors when consumers are purchasing things. If I want to use my ZW$35,000 in one go please allow me to do so without issue.

…and mobile money service providers?

At the moment there are two things, I can see mobile money consumers doing to make consumers lives easier. First mobile money services can give more clarity as to when a week actually begins and ends so that I know which part of the cycle I’m on at any given time (pun definitely not intended).

Mobile money providers can also provide notifications reminding consumers how close they are to exhausting the weekly limit so that none of us bite more than we can actually chew when transacting. This will make probably reduce transaction reversals and make the service a bit more palatable to use.