Earlier in the year, the volume and value of cashless payments went up drastically this year following a number of measures to incentivize the uptake, especially to reduce chances of contracting the Coronavirus. For instance, between January and April, cashless payments rose by 450 per cent to reach about Rwf40bn as various service providers temporarily removed costs involved which were a huge hindrance. The progress also followed a cashless payment system awareness campaign by the Central Bank in a bid to drive uptake. Following the lapse of the temporary window of removal of transaction costs, the volumes and values have dropped slightly but a majority of users stayed the course as they had gained insight to the benefits, convenience and need for cashless payments. However, the experience of a large section of banks and Telcos’ clients in the last month or so has left them doubtful on the hyped cashless payments systems. For the last few weeks, a number of banks have been experiencing system failures and challenges making it impossible for users to access their money for cashless payments. To make matters worse, attempts to withdraw cash from Automated Teller Machines have at times been futile as the machines are often empty following huge demand as thousands are often affected at a time. In other instances, bank clients have resulted in calling out their respective service providers on social media platforms such as Twitter as they are at times unavailable via toll free numbers to allay clients’ concerns on what the outstanding issues are. It has not been uncommon to hear instances of weekend plans ruined due to the respective banks’ ‘system failure’ while others have had to turn to their friends and colleagues for soft loans to get them through a couple of days. Salaried workers have gone days waiting for their pay which they couldn’t access due to unexplained system failures. All these erode the public’s confidence in the cashless payment systems as they come off as unreliable and complex. The lack of swift responses during system downtimes as well as limited communication over time breeds distrust in the system and could leave users feeling safer off walking with a bag of cash which is unlikely to experience ‘system failure.’ The events over the recent weeks could be termed as scoring an own goal considering how much it could deplete the gains made in the cashless ambitions. To the players, cease scoring own goals.
