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Steward Bank's ZimSwitch application hits a snag

by Staff reporter
19 Dec 2013 at 04:10hrs | Views
THE ugly fight between banks and Econet Zimbabwe, the country's largest telecoms company, has sucked in its subsidiary Steward Bank, amid revelations other banks have refused the bank entry onto the popular ZimSwitch platform, which is controlled by the banking industry.

Sources within the banking industry said ZimSwitch, majority owned by the banks in Zimbabwe that hold varied shareholdings, has been sitting on an application by Steward Bank to join its clearing and settlement network, in the wake of the ongoing wrangle between the banks and Steward Bank's parent company, Econet.

Steward Bank has never been connected to the ZimSwitch platform.

Econet invested in the bank, formerly TN Bank, after pumping in about $20 million to acquire a 45 percent shareholding in the financial institution.

Efforts to get a comment from Econet were fruitless yesterday as the company did not respond to e-mailed questions from the Herald Business. Similarly, no comment could be obtained from ZimSwitch yesterday.

Banks have accused Econet Wireless of playing big brother in the financial market by engaging in practices bordering on monopolistic behaviour by refusing equal and unrestricted access to its mobile phone network for the provision of mobile based banking services.

"Other banks have lobbied against the admission of Econet's banking unit (Steward Bank) in retaliation over the mobile phone operator's refusal to allow banks free access to use its network platform," said a source.

Banks have in the recent past expressed reservations about the conduct of Econet and whether the mobile phone operator was behaving ethically.

Source - herald