The government of Zimbabwe through the Minister of Finance and Economic Development has with immediate gazetted Statutory Instrument 80 of 2020 which enforces interoperability across all mobile network operators and money transmission, enforcing mobile money players to share switches, while it also takes over the sole role of authorizing tariffs.

This move simply means one can now send money from Telecash to Ecocash, One Money or vice versa, plus any other operator like sendmetoo, sendmoney etc, a very exciting move to the users but disruptive to the operators.

The reserve bank has also announced that all money transmission providers will only charge below their regulated fees, meaning they now determine ceiling costs with punitive measures against any violations.

The money transmission providers shall be monitored in real time and the reserve bank must be given such access to any licensed operator, though the only access level shall be limited to read only.

While the move will be greatly celebrated by subscribers, it seems it is more motivated by need to control black market foreign currency trading, which have heavily driven the foreign currency rates.