Thousands of ZB Bank customers are unable to access ATM and POS services Via ZimSwith today. At various banks, there were long queues of customers at ATMs making it difficult for numerous customers to make withdrawals from their accounts through the ATMs.
Speaking on the Issue ZB Bank Group CEO , Ron Mutandagayi said “We regret to advise that owning to an unstable network connectivity link between our card platform and Zimswitch, transactions on ATMs and POS gadgets have been timing out.”
“Our Technical team is working flat out with bandwidth providers to resolve the challenges.In the interim we have switched our backup link and are closely monitoring the situation.” Mr Mutandagayi added.
Unable to use their bank cards, shoppers had to abandon their trolleys at supermarkets and frustration soon spilled over onto social media.
These latest problems come when Zimbabwe have been moving to the use of plastic money and according to Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya , electronic transactions have reached US$5.5 billion in the first six months of this year by which is a significant increase.
Even retailers such as OK Zimbabwe, TM Pick N Pay and others continue to make improvements to their existing digital payments products or introduce new ones.
The repeated failures have raised the issue of banks’ reliance on third party providers and data centers and their failure to backup their services at alternative locations and thus avoid the problems caused.
