By Joyce Mukucha and Anyway Yotamu
State owned telecoms provider, NetOne is spearheading OneMoney activations for informal sector players in the Harare Central Business District (CBD) by offering them a merchant code which will enable them to accept OneMoney transactions onto their businesses.
The OneMoney platform is connected to the ZIMSWITCH network, a platform which enables instant inter-bank funds transfers and easy sending of money from bank account to mobile money wallet between ZIMSWITCH member institutions by focusing on real-time smaller transfer amounts with lower transfer costs.
In an interview with Spiked Online Media, the Zone Commander for Harare Region, Shepherd Muyutu said the move was aimed at making sure that all people cross over to NetOne especially with OneMoney product so as to reduce the challenges faced in businesses when making transactions.
“What we are doing today is moving from complex to complex in the CBD just to make sure that all the businesses that are around which might be struggling to accept payments from our OneMoney customers are on board the OneMoney platform by offering them a merchant code that they will be using to accept OneMoney transactions onto their businesses.
“We are also saying all those who have got informal businesses, who are unbanked, we would like to offer them a solution through what we are calling a P to P merchant can accept ZIPIT into their OneMoney account so that they can be able to accept their transactions via our ZIPIT platform. OneMoney can perform other functions that a bank can perform and have scrapped off all the charges up to the 31st of December 2019. What is only left is the mandatory and statutory 2 percent charges,” said Muyutu.
He said the One Money platform was advantageous in the sense that it is fast and reliable. Muyutu said to date, Netone has not received any complaints from customers claiming that their money is hanging somewhere within the OneMoney system.
The exercise is countrywide as is it also being facilitated in the areas outside the CBD and in other zones outside Harare. So far, massive turnout has been received around the businesses which are embracing the product in other zones.
One of the small business operators who got registered to the service, Anastacia Makora said that she was happy to become a OneMoney user. She said it was her hope that OneMoney is going to give better services as compared to other platforms which are currently giving her challenges in as much as transacting funds is concerned.
The Acting Chief of Mobile Money, Mhonda Sibanda, said that the organisation has achieved quite a lot with a number of 16 500 agents and 7 000 merchants registered since the service inception on the last week of November.
“This is one of the newest innovations we have come up with to address the challenges encountered by small business players. It’s not just a campaign where we are sitting in our offices and then propose or come up with solutions but we get into the market, understand the market pin points and their expectations from us.”
