THE Consumer Protection Commission, a relatively new body set up under the Consumer Protection Act by the Second Republic, is now starting to flex its considerable muscle with a blitz underway on those who refuse to accept payment in any form except US dollar banknotes.
It is strange in the modern world for any business to refuse point-of-sale devices, usually called swipe machines, or to refuse to accept payments through one of the mobile payment platforms or even through online banking applications.
Banks and mobile money operations have set up systems that routinely deal with the dual currency market found in Zimbabwe's retail sector and it is now perfectly possible for a shopper to pay in ZiG or US dollars with the same debit card going into a PoS machine or the same mobile money platform.
The retailer simply designates the currency for the transaction on the till, and in legally compliant shops this means asking the customer how they want to pay and in what currency, and the software then activates the PoS machine for the right price in the right currency.
Where the customer has to initiate the mobile money payment, the app will ask the customer in the first question to select the currency of choice.
It is all very simple and easy, and even in the odd area where there is no customer option as to currency, and most deals involving petroleum fuels for example have to be in US dollars, it is still possible to be in the 21st century than expect customers to have 19th century piles of cash in their wallets.
But the Consumer Protection Commission has found 80 percent of service stations want cash payments, rather than allow customers the convenience of electronic transfers, even if payments have to be limited to US dollars in this rare case. This perhaps explains why robbers tend to target service stations. The serious level of overtrading now hitting the retail fuel sector does open competitive avenues for the more innovative.
Service stations are sprouting along all vaguely main roads, and possibly without their licence from petroleum regulator Zera, and often in defiance of town planning by-laws even when a council has granted, wrongly, permission.
It would seem reasonable that many of these service stations could acquire an edge by simply getting their bank to supply them with a swipe machine, and then advertise this fact on their signage and so attract customers.
A lot of people dislike the idea of wandering around with a pile of banknotes that can be stolen by robbers or pickpockets, and can even get torn or damaged and so become useless for transactions and have to be deposited in banks who, quite rationally since they have to arrange for the return of the notes to a US bank, raise a modest charge.
One major reason why some businesses insist on cash and refuse to accept any electronic transfer method goes beyond the desperate desire to have a pure US dollar business.
Cash has the additional extra advantage for those who are less than honest of making it a lot easier to cheat on taxes.
When takings are banked it is easy to produce the required accounts that show turnover and takings. Why Zimra insists on even medium-sized businesses these days running fiscalised tills, so that there is a record that can be used to calculate VAT collections from customers and thus payments due to Zimra, there are businesses who do not use tills.
Many customers, indeed, can find that traders not only do not have a PoS machine, refuse to accept mobile transfers, even in US dollars, but "cannot find their receipt book" or have a "broken till".
By now they are building up a fair batch of offences under the Consumer Protection Act, Bank Use Promotion and Suppression of Money Laundering Act and the assorted tax laws and regulations.
The Consumer Protection Commission has been imposing penalties, but is limited in just how much it can impose. It is keen for Parliament to look at raising the sort of penalty that can be imposed.
We would also like to see more joint operations in these blitzes against the less honest businesses and can imagine that if inspectors from the commission and the tax authorities were involved in joint raids it might be possible to hit some of the service stations and tuck shops that are far from complaint with a swathe of charges and penalties and make it very expensive to do business outside strict adherence to the law.
Many of the less compliant businesses are often unlicenced by their local authority, or at least are in arrears over licence fees, or have not ticked all the required boxes when sorting out licences, and so there is another plank.
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A tuckshop being run out of the back of a hatchback in a corner of a suburban supermarket and accepting only US dollars in cash would seem to be in breach of a wide range of rules, and yet is far advanced from the small-time vegetable vendor who might be given more leeway.
In the end, though, even pavement vendors should be willing to accept at least mobile money, and some in fact do so.
But everyone at least one step up the ladder should be registered for taxes, even if they do not earn enough to pay, and should be willing to accept payment in almost any form, since they are supposed to be keeping their money in a bank, not a bag or trunk of US dollar banknotes.
Increasingly, those who demand cash are trying to cheat their customers, even insisting on them buying little items to cope with the lack of change, and the Consumer Protection Commission is right in going after these businesses.
The commission has been asking the public to report businesses who refuse swipe cards and the like, and we would urge people who come across this sort of irritating, as well as illegal, behaviour to take up that invitation and pass on the information.
