Harare - ZB Bank's strategic focus will be on the renovation of its technological infrastructure and better position itself for digital delivery of its service offerings, ZB Bank Chief Executive Officer, Ronald Mutandagayi said on Thursday.

Mutandagayi said the strategic drive towards creating digital platforms offer great convienience, reduce costs of transacation and give customers more value.

"This year we officially launched our refreshed internet banking platform which also came with an application that allows customers to do RTGS payments in the comfort of their home or office."

"Because we are a Bank that is in touch with reality, we noticed that as a mass Bank most of our customers were unable to perform banking transactions from their homes or places of work and hence we installed wifi in all our branches to allow customers to transact using their mobile phones at our branches," he said.

He said prior to their arrival in Mutare, the unbanked community accounted a significant percentage of the population.

"Prior to our arrival in Mutare, the unbanked community accounted for a significant percentage of the population with most saving at home, in stokvels (round groups) and those who believed in "keeping the wealth within the family.

"Our presence in Mutare is not merely a business decision but a community development one, where we seek to research and identify challenges and obstacles to growth and proffer solutions."

With bank customer loyalty and trust at a low point in Zimbabwe following a decade of financial fallout and economic downturn, banks are facing a challenge of reconnecting with customers, rebuilding trust and renewing the banking experience by introducing digital technologies and solutions.

Forward-looking financial services providers are seeing a silver lining and are rapidly capitalising on the digital wave to re-establish themselves as the bank of choice with customers.

All Zim banks are battling to have a bite of the cherry as transactional business grow. Innovation has become the game in town with digital platforms offering an alternative to the hard cash crisis.