World Remit to stop direct bank transfers for Zimbabwe starting month-end

Valentine Muhamba

15 June 2022

Global money transfer agent, World Remit has announced that it will no longer allow its customers in Zimbabwe to receive money directly into their bank accounts.

The statement from World Remit reads as follows:

At WorldRemit, we pride ourselves on offering the best possible service to our customers. Sometimes that means removing services where we don’t believe we can provide the best-quality service or the widest range of options for you.
We’ve decided to remove bank transfers from our service in Zimbabwe. From 29/06/2022, you won’t be able to send money to bank accounts in Zimbabwe.
We do apologise for any inconvenience this causes to yo or your loved ones. The good news is that our other money transfers, including cash pickup, mobile money and airtime, will still be available. Have a look at our website and app for more information.
Thank you,
WorldRemit Customer Care team.

This new change doesn’t affect customers being able to collect cash from World Remit collection points nationwide.

Is World Remit doing Zimbos a favour here?

If you live in the diaspora it is difficult to keep up with Zimbabwe’s financial regulation landscape. For one thing, there is an SI almost every quarter that denotes some massive shift in regulation at a moment’s notice. We saw something similar last month when the government announced its new economic measures which included things like the 4% domestic USD transfer tax and the 2% NOSTRO withdrawal tax above US$1,000.

I have two theories, the first is that World Remit is tired of dealing with the financial regulation gymnastics in Zimbabwe and would rather just let people collect cash because it’s less of a headache for them than dealing with banks and whatever rules they now have to follow.

The second is that World Remit might be cheekily doing Zimbos in the diaspora a favour by delivering whatever money is sent directly as cash. This means that they won’t have to find out what new financial regulations are in effect and secondly, they won’t make the mistake of sending money without knowing if there is a sneaky new tax imposed on the banks in effect.

I’d be curious to know your musings about this move by World Remit and the cancellation of bank transfers.

Finance

13 comments

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Please

15 June 2022 15:55

Are we going to survive in this global recession? We have been fighting our way up everyday. Things are getting tougher by the day, with fewer beneficiaries. When other nations are enjoying boom, we will be crying here. This has to end.

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Tariro

15 June 2022 16:10

Anyone with idea on which bank account do online payment to platforms like alibaba

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1. Anonymous
  
  15 June 2022 18:23
  
  Use Banc ABC’s Visa Card it has a 1% charge on transactions
  
  Reply
2. Max
  
  16 June 2022 05:06
  
  @Tariro if you need assistance buy things from Alibaba.com contact https://riverpoppy.com/ they’ll be able to assist you.
  
  Reply
The Empress

15 June 2022 16:49

Most people can’t really understand what the new government rules mean and when they get affected they first blame World Remit and leave bad reviews. Then World Remit has to spend time explaining what new insanity the Zimbabwean government has enacted and how it affects their the customers. So they sat down and decided it was not worth the hassle and cut the service.

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Anonymous

15 June 2022 18:23

Chaora chinhu ichi

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Anonymous

16 June 2022 02:59

Theory number 3 “Targeted Sanctions”. Doing business in Zimbabwe is in the grey area. If you have noticed most online payment/wallet/financial services have Zimbabwe listed in the same category as the likes of KoreaDPR, Iran etc. They are risk markets, where you will probably end up violating sanctions imposed on those countries or violating domestic laws aimed at countering those sanctions. Or both.

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Ronnie chinoingira

16 June 2022 10:35

That’s great you have stopped corruption from your services,and it’s not of your making, Wrong people were benefiting ,That’s the financial officers from the banks involved.SO STOP IT!!!!!!

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Anonymous

16 June 2022 10:51

We stopped trusting the banks long ago. What doesnit tell you if the “banks” stop trusting banks? Why are the banks not standing up for themselves, if they look after the interests of their customers will they not get more customers? Internet Transfers are very convenient but who wants to pay 4% when it ends up “cheaper” to handle hard cash?…. The more “penalties” the banking system has the less we (and other banks) want to use the banks – is this not so?

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Zimbo in diaspora

16 June 2022 12:50

Seems money to banks has been delaying to be credited of late. Tracers havent been responded to. The money gets credited when the other banks makes noise A similar situation like in 2006/7, but then we learnt RBZ had to end up raiding bank accounts of individuals and companies. Now its claimed we have enough receipts from exports to meet our import needs, so we dont know why seeing similar patterns as of 2005. Its normal money that gets into the country and takes days to be credited is being used elsewhere. You only get it credited when there is enough to replace the “missing amount”

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Optimus

17 June 2022 07:37

Yah. Such is the standard of ‘journalism’ at Techzim. Why ‘theorise’ when facts are there? Did they also withdraw services from Singapore because of Mthuli’s gymnastics? How many people actually used the bank transfer option to justify its continued offering?

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Aly Daphka

10 July 2022 22:01

Salut à vous je devais reçu un argent à mon nom depuis quatre jours mais j’ai eu un mauvais numéro de compte je ne peux pas faire de retrait j’ai pas eu le bon numéro de compte pouvez-vous me le renvoyer svp

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Piet Herbst

3 August 2022 09:01

I agree with most of what has been said above. In 2006 our church had US@16000 in the bank that was towards our building. The Reserve Bank emptied our account and it took a long time to get the money back. Thanks World Remit for your move. I just wonder how long it will be before the bank introduces new regulations to tax that money.

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