Government says a simplified and cashless society will help with the fight against financial fraud among other social and economic benefits.
Technology and Science Minister Minister Felix Mutati says innovations in the financial platforms need to be kept simple to onboard more users to reduce cash transactions and help to reduce financial frauds.
ZANIS reports that speaking at the launch of the Airtel Money Pay launch, Mr Mutati said the government strives to make business simple and cheaper for small businesses and has hailed Airtel Zambia for providing the service through Airtel Money Pay, which he said will also encourage job creation among small businesses.
“Whatever you do in the area of innovation and technology it is to change and transform lives. We transform lives by keeping technology simple and beyond keeping technology simple you’re also solving one of our major headaches that you are allowing the merchant not to keep cash and therefore, the opportunity of fraud is being eliminated in the process” he said
Mr. Mutati said Mobile Money is a big player in the financial sector and that the government is exploring ways in which the platform can be used to drive liquidity in the economy and reduce the cost of money.
The Minister said he is elated that Airtel Zambia has designed a product for the Small and Medium Enterprises that will make business easy and offer the much needed credit facility for the businesses.
And speaking at the same launch, Airtel Money Executive Director Apoorva Mehrotra said majority of users of Airtel money do not have bank accounts.
“Today Airtel Money is embarking on a journey to help digitize payments for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Zambia. We believe this initiative will help to accelerate ownership of mobile money accounts, uses of mobile wallets instead of cash, and enable our partners in the ecosystem Banks and Fintech to roll out savings and borrowing products to MSMEs in the Country” he said.