Paynet Zimbabwe, a subsidiary of Payserv Zimbabwe, has moved to sidestep local banks by partnering with mobile money service provider, Ecocash.

Paynet is the electronic payments processing system offered to the market through financial institutions, but it has of late been involved in a tiff with the latter, accusing them of voracity after they refused to pay fees in foreign currency for using its payments platform.

The dispute is threatened to stifle salary payments for numerous huge corporates in the country.

To this extent Paynet has announced that it will partner Ecocash for salary payments in an initiative that will see firms paying salaries directly into their employees’ EcoCash wallets.

Paynet, which is part of the Payserv group, already offers electronic payroll processing services and through this development it would tap into continuously growing EcoCash subscriber base.

This move is a temporary reprieve, as banks have not had access to Paynet’s solution which enables them to make bulk payments since June 15.

“Paynet and Ecocash offer to provide Paynet secure, encrypted and tested salary payment services through to 1 August 2019. Here after, the service will be competitively priced compared to any alternatives available in the market,” said Paynet.

“As a payment platform which has provided secure, private and reliable service to the nation for over two decades, Paynet urges regulators and consumers to are fully review the indemnities required to use alternative services.

“Your employees will be able to immediately fund their linked bank accounts using Zipit, currently priced by ZimSwitch at 55 cents RTGS.”

Earlier in April Paynet Zimbabwe informed all local banks on its platform that the technology owner will directly invoice in US dollars.

Paynet provides an outsourced payments transfer platform linking 22 financial institutions and over 1200 corporate institutions in all sectors of the Zimbabwean economy.

Banks have since instructed their clients to use alternative means.