Bankers Association of Malawi (BAM) banks says it will continue to invest in infrastructure for consumers to continue using the payment channels which it says are reliable and safe.
The assurance by banks come after Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) urged consumers not to rely solely on bank digital transactions, indicating that banks are not yet ready to embrace financial inclusion and its technologies that are seamless and work for consumers.
In a written response, however, BAM executive director Lynes Nkungula said banks have made heavy investments on Internet infrastructure, observing that local banks were equally affected by the recent under-ocean fiber optic cable failures.
She said: “The industry has made several strides.
“While, we would want to have ideal operations, some distractions are inevitable.”
Nkungula said all banks have a reputational risk to protect, and different interventions are put in place to make sure that customer service delivery is without complaints.
In a statement earlier, Cama executive director John Kapito said most traders are unwilling to use point of sale (PoS) technology to Internet connectivity failures, which becomes a huge challenge when a purchase is almost concluded.
He said: “Digital payment systems especially POS and ATM’s are meant to improve speed for digital financial transactions and on top of that they are meant to maximise total security protection for both consumers and traders and above all, create a cashless digital market and reduce the cost of printing cash paper which should benefit both the consumer, trader, government and the banks.
“Financial inclusion demands huge investment by banks and the Reserve Bank as a regulator needs strong laws to ensure that the Banks are complying.”
Published Reserve Bank of Malawi data shows that digital financial services (DFS) usage continued to increase, with the volume and value of transactions rising by 31.2 percent and 55.3 percent to 1.4 billion and K21.8 trillion, respectively.
Major contributors to the rise in DFS transactions were POS services, Internet banking and mobile money services, which registered increases of 67.7 percent, 32.0 percent and 31.3 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, the rise in value was a result of mobile banking, POS, and mobile money services which rose by 79.6 percent, 68.3 percent and 59.9 percent, respectively.
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