Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa says the country should permanently embrace mobile and electronic payments as cash-based transactions will now constitute at most 10% of total transactions, as government moves to stem corruption.

Officiating at a work ethics and corporate summit in Harare yesterday, Chinamasa said the digitisation of the financial services sector will make it complex for people to indulge into corrupt activities.

“We are going to capacitate all agencies mandated with the fight against corruption meaning here we are going to capacitate the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, the Zimbabwe Republic police. We are also going to strengthen the judiciary system to deal with cases of corruption. We are promoting digitisation of financial services,” he said.

“What I want to emphasise is the future direction is electronic and mobile payment system. We are going to move away from cash-based transactions. They will remain but they should constitute about 10 to 15% of total transactions that are undertaken in the country.”

The digitisation of financial services, he said, would make it difficult for people to engage in corrupt practices.

“This will go a long way to stamp out corruption. The idea that we can move with cash to buy a car [and], a house which has become the pattern, I think this will be no more. We should move away from that.

What it means is that that cash won’t be accounted to tax authorities, that cash won’t be deposited into the banks and as a result cause and contribute to the shortage of cash and inefficient circulation of cash. So we are moving away from that system,” he said.

Zimbabwe has been experiencing cash crisis since 2015 with desperate citizens enduring long queues to withdraw cash.

The cash shortages has forced people to adopt the use of plastic money with statistics from Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe showing that 96% of the $97,5 billion transacted in 2017 was from plastic money.

-Newsday