“The number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.” — Tom Hopkins
With Phillip Chichoni
Zimswitch last week announced the launch of its eCommerce Vpayments platform, which will enable its member financial institutions to offer secure, internet- based payments to their customers.
The platform also offers merchants the ability to sell their goods online. Before this launch, setting up and running an internet-based or online business in Zimbabwe was cumbersome. you needed to open a merchant account with a bank outside Zimbabwe in order to receive online payments.
Now that online transaction has been simplified, entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe can now seriously start building online businesses.
The online world has been fraught with dangers and uncertainties ever since the internet boom, which saw many people losing money after investing in phoney dot-com businesses in the 1990s.
Some of the out-right phoney ones include CyberRebate, which promised customers a 100% rebate after purchasing products priced at nearly 10 times the retail cost. It went bankrupt in 2002, leaving thousands of customers holding the bag. The bankruptcy was settled in 2005 and customers received about eight cents on the dollar from their original rebates. Another one, DigiScents tried to transmit smells over the internet.(Source: Wikipedia)
Numerous online businesses went bust within a few years and others were bought by larger firms, such as Hotmail, which was bought by Microsoft in 1997. Another example is eToys.com, a retail website that sold toys via the internet. The etoys.com domain name was acquired by Toys “R” Us in February 2009.
