CAN A CASHLESS SOCIETY SAVE ZIMBABWE?
BAZ ' s Jinya said the association realized that the informal sector needed help adapting. " Opportunities exist for the informal sector which needs technology that is easy to use and that will assist them to transact especially in low values."
The crisis and the need for hard cash has also forced many into the black market, IHS economist Strobel said, where dealers are trading the dollar for electronic dollars for a higher rate.
A cashless society: a useful legacy of the crisis?
Laurence Chandy, a fellow at Brookings Institution ' s global program, said that while a cashless society is " a way of lessening the chaos " in Zimbabwe, it can ' t fix the crisis alone-- people need to start trusting financial institutions again.
" People have reason to be distrusting," he said, adding that a cashless society in Zimbabwe is only feasible if it can tick three boxes: confidence, affordability and reliability. While Chandy believes payments in Zimbabwe ' s could go completely digital, there ' s still a lot of work to be done
People need to be confident their electronic money will be accepted as tender with anyone they transact with, there can ' t be any additional charges for making the payments and the digital infrastructure needs to be flawless to ensure every payment goes through successfully. " What mobile can do is deal with the affordability and
reliability issue, but they can ' t do much about the credibility issue. " Ensuring confidence among its users isn ' t entirely in a telco( telecommunication) company ' s control." If broader reforms were made by the government and financial institutions which encouraged foreign investment and exports, Chandy explained, a cashless society could be highly beneficial in the long term for Zimbabwe. " It would lend itself to an economy which is much more secure where transaction costs are much lower and where the informal economy could be incorporated into the formal sector because transactions can be monitored effectively." " I think that ' s the possible upshot of all of this," he said, " it might end up being a useful legacy of the crisis." " If we see broader reforms then it ' ll accelerate Zimbabwe into this future paradigm cashless society."
IF WE SEE BROADER REFORMS THEN IT ' LL ACCELERATE ZIMBABWE INTO THIS FUTURE PARADIGM CASHLESS SOCIETY
62 Business Times Africa | 2016