Mukuru launches tenth money transfer ‘Drive-Thru’ in Zimbabwe
South Africa based financial services platform Mukuru has launched a drive-thru service in Chisipite, Harare in Zimbabwe for domestic and international money transfers. The firm aims to further its promise to make financial services more accessible to people across Zimbabwe.
Drive-thru is one of the fintech’s newest locations in Zimbabwe, along with nine other sites that launched in February 2023. According to The World Bank, remittances to sub-Saharan Africa grew an estimated 5.2 percent to $53 billion in 2022, compared to 16.4 percent the previous year. The decline in the growth rate of remittances to the region is attributed to persistent “adverse conditions in the global environment and regional source countries.”
Despite a slowdown in its growth rate, fintech is pushing ahead with its goals of improving financial inclusion at this time. Marc Carrie-Wilson, Country Manager for Zimbabwe in Mukuru, explained: “While we are realistic about the economic outlook, as a leading South African financial services business we strive to enable financial inclusion for Africa’s emerging markets. This is why we continually shift our focus to innovative ways that make financial services more accessible to the people of Zimbabwe and those in the diaspora.
“As we grow our footprint in the country, we explored various innovative ideas to push the envelope and challenge the type of locations we have as a finance company. Security remains a top priority for us, and the drive-thru idea proved to be the safest and most practical option for our customers.
“The Chisipite drive-thru is open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily (including holidays) and comes with a ‘walk-in’ option for customers who wish to register or visit the site on foot. Of the ten new locations, Chisipite is the only drive-thru -thru at the moment but we hope to launch one in Bulawayo in the next phase.”
Partnership
As part of the innovation, Mukuru has also launched a number of services in recent months to build a diverse product offering for customers. This includes a collaboration with Multiple choice which aims to make it easier to pay for DStv. Mukuru also partnered with Calculate to deliver money transfers directly to customers across Zimbabwe.
Carrie-Wilson concluded: “We have seen how well these collaborations work in our ongoing partnership with the wholesaler Metro Peech & Brownethat makes shopping for groceries, stationery and appliances more convenient for people in Zimbabwe using our platform.”
Mukuru currently has over 100 million transactions to date. Fintech built its core to offer international money transfers and from this base also developed a set of services to meet the broader financial needs of its customers. Mukuru now operates in over 50 countries, in addition to over 300 money transfer corridors.
