Central Bank continuously monitoring players in financial space – Kamanga

BUUMBA CHIMBULU writes@SunZambianTHE Bank of Zambia (BoZ) is strictly monitoring players in the financial space to ensure only products with manageable risks and prevent fraud are rolled out to consumers, as seven million people are currently actively using mobile money wallet.Players need to convince the Central Bank that they have a robust management framework good enough to protect people’s money, says Director Banking, Currency and Payment Systems, Lazarous Kamanga.Mr Kamanga said a robust management framework was cardinal before products were rolled out to consumers in enduring the people’s money was secured.He was speaking this week during a Radio show to discuss “Enhancing FinTech Adoption in Zambia.”“Most of the players technologically they are good but the challenge they face is understand that the technology they are trying to introduce is going into the financial sector.“In the financial sector, the key issues we look at are risks. For example, before mobile money became popular, we had to nature players to ensure that their systems are robust to reduce issues of fraud through those systems,” Mr Kamanga said.The Central Bank, he said, was on top of everything to ensure that the delivery of financial services was done efficiently and in a safe manner.Mr Kamanga also said close to seven million people were actively using mobile wallet to transact financially.He said this meant that seven million people on average undertook a financial transactions such as transferring money from their wallet or visited agent to transfer money in the last 90 days.Mobile penetration in Zambia is currently above 90 percent.“We have had initiatives since the outbreak of COVID-19 where providers of these services were told that transfer from zero-150 can be free.“With that policy initiative, we have seen a huge growth in terms of usage of mobile money in this country,” Mr Kamanga said. The Sun