RBZ gets it right with wallet clean-up

THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's drive to eliminate ghost, fictitious and duplicate mobile money wallets is a significant step towards restoring credibility and integrity in the country's rapidly expanding digital payments ecosystem.

By linking the Civil Registry's national database with mobile financial services subscriber records, the central bank is addressing a longstanding vulnerability in Zimbabwe's financial system - the disconnect between an individual's national identity, mobile number and financial account.

Such gaps can create opportunities for fraud, impersonation, identity manipulation and illicit financial flows. In an economy increasingly dependent on electronic payments, allowing these weaknesses to persist would undermine both consumer confidence and financial sector stability.

The RBZ said all licensed mobile money operators had complied with its directive to rescreen wallets and remove ghost accounts, with the exercise completed by June 30.

The clean-up was supported by strengthened Know Your Customer requirements and closer coordination between the central bank, telecommunications regulators, mobile network operators and the Civil Registry Department.

The "one line, one wallet" principle has been in place since 2021, yet inconsistencies in subscriber databases have persisted. This highlights a fundamental lesson in financial regulation: rules are only as effective as the systems used to enforce them.

The RBZ therefore deserves credit for moving towards continuous verification, targeted inspections and transaction analytics, as well as the deregistration of accounts that cannot be properly verified.

Penalties against non-compliant operators should also be applied consistently, particularly where weaknesses in internal controls expose consumers to financial losses or facilitate financial crime.

There is a broader monetary and economic dimension to the exercise.

Inflated wallet numbers and artificial transaction volumes can distort policymakers' understanding of the size and behaviour of Zimbabwe's digital economy. Poorly verified accounts can also create channels for speculative activity, fraud and illicit transfers.

Cleaning up the mobile money ecosystem should therefore improve not only consumer protection but also the quality of financial intelligence available to regulators and policymakers.

Zimbabwe's move towards biometric and API-driven authentication is encouraging, but technology alone will not resolve the underlying challenges.

The integrity of the financial ecosystem will ultimately depend on the accuracy of underlying data, interoperability between institutions, effective supervision and accountability by financial and telecommunications companies.

The RBZ should also resist the temptation to declare victory too early.

A clean database today can become compromised tomorrow if verification is treated as a once-off exercise. Continuous monitoring, regular reconciliation and prompt action against anomalies will be essential to keeping the system clean.

The mobile money clean-up should therefore be viewed not as a one-off purge, but as the beginning of a more rigorous and permanent approach to identity verification and digital financial integrity.

For a country increasingly reliant on electronic payments, ensuring that every wallet belongs to a real, identifiable and properly verified customer is not merely a regulatory requirement - it is fundamental to maintaining trust in the financial system.