Zimswitch celebrated its 30th Anniversary and I know many are still amazed that the national switch is that old, me included.
At the dinner celebrations held last Friday, Zimswitch contributed $1000 for every year of its existence to the Cancer Association of Zimbabwe – a check for $30,000 was duly handed over.
It’s always good to see organisations give back to the community. However, let’s look back at the milestones that led us to this place.
Reminder of what Zimswitch does
Zimswitch facilitates electronic transactions between banks and other financial services institutions. So that includes:
- Interbank transfers
- Point of Sale (POS) transactions
- A shared ATM network
- Mobile and online banking
- You could say ZIPIT falls in the mobile and internet banking category. It allows users to send and receive money instantly.
As it goes, some financial institution had to be the first to use each Zimswitch’s services. Zimswitch honoured each of the firsts with awards at the dinner celebrations.
The Awards
- First ATM issuer (1995) – ZB Bank (formerly Founders Building Society)
- First ATM acquirer (1995) – First Capital Bank (formerly Barclays Bank)
- First POS issuer (1996) – CBZ Bank (Beverly Building Society)
- First POS acquirer (1996) – CABS
- ZIPIT Pioneers (2012) – CBZ Bank, CABS, FBC Bank
- ZEEPAY Pioneers (2021) – First Capital Bank, CBZ Bank
- First Mobile Money Provider on Zimswitch – Telecash
- First Microfinance on Zimswitch – African Century Limited
- Settlement Bank since 1994 – Stanbic
Here are some of the winners with their awards:
So, that’s 30 years in a nutshell. I wonder what kind of services we’ll be talking about in another 30 years.
I don’t imagine the founders would have foreseen something like ZIPIT and so I guess it’s futile trying to speculate on what other new services will have been introduced by then.
We could be talking about Zimswitch-enabled microchip implants (a la 666) and other sci-fi thingymajigs. We shall see.
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