The central bank has concluded its cashless Rwanda campaign with a call on the business community to be ‘digital payment ambassadors for the country to achieve its cashless vision.

"The success of the cashless Rwanda drive will depend, not only on payment facilities available in the market, but on the adoption by all Rwandans, which largely depends on you (business community),” John Rwangombwa, the National Bank of Rwanda chief said.

Therefore, lead by example by adopting digital payments, he added.

Rwangombwa was, on Tuesday, addressing Private Sector Federation (PSF) members from Rubavu and Nyabihu districts at Lake Kivu Serena Hotel. This was the last stop in the over four-week drive by the central bank on how to promote use of e-payment systems among businesses, professional groups and the general public.

While rooting for use of financial digital tools like debit or credit cards and points of sale (POS) merchants, the BNR governor said cash handling exposes merchants, businesses and governments to a lot of direct and indirect costs "though many people are not aware of this”.

"The government has put in place the necessary infrastructure to enable easy transactions without having people leave their offices or homes,” he added.

Paper money costly, fuels crime

Rwangombwa said that the cost of using e-payments will reduce if the majority of the population embrace electronic payments.

The central bank chief explained that when users are many, financial institutions would get good returns on their investments and, eventually, reduce or scrap the charges.

"Cash is easy to hide, it facilitates bribery and tax evasion. Studies have shown a strong correlation between the amount of cash in circulation and crime rates,” he added on BNR’s Twitter feed.

On expenses for outgoing payments to suppliers, businesses generally spend over 88 hours a month processing roughly 45 per cent of the payments made using cash, cheques, and money orders.

While the level of handling, counting, and processing costs varies by size of business.Companies spend on average about 68 hours per week managing cash, according to available statistics.

"Businesses lose an equivalent of 4 per cent of their revenues per month due to theft, counterfeit money, and cash register shortages,” he said, urging traders not to be captives of paper money when they can choose electronic payments.

Finsocpe 2016 survey shows that consumers spend an hour, on average, to reach the nearest bank branch besides wasting more time in queues.

Studies show that on average, businesses spend 2 per cent of their revenue per month, on incoming non-digital payments.