Becoming The Muse

Coffee With The Kingdom Of Funny Money

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words in the Kingdom Of Funny Money… Feel at home, you will be perfectly safe, as long as you are not carrying a large amount cash, but whatever you do, don’t deposit it in a local bank, and if you do bank it… withdraw all of it as soon as possible and try not draw any attention to yourself, like, I don’t know, posting pictures of yourself holding said money…

There have been an increase in the number of people losing astonishing amounts of cash to robbers… Astonishing, because I thought we were all in the same boat, operated by a shoestring budget that anyone trying to rob me, would laugh and I would laugh and we’d laugh together.  But then you read of thieves stealing $46 000 from a parked car, a man losing $180 000 while asleep at a girlfriend’s house, a business owner losing $500 000.

For those unfamiliar with our complex monetary situation, in a nutshell we have had hyperinflation, rebooted, rebranded and revalued currency and currently we are using The ZiG, Zimbabwe Gold which is said to be a gold backed currency. Over the years the government has instituted some out-of-the box solutions which saw our former president being dubbed The King Of Funny Money by The Economist which by extension, makes us loyal subjects in the Kingdom Of Funny Money.

If you were having coffee with me, I would ask if you can see how having lived through multiple currency crashes, bank collapses and savings devalued overnight, one doesn’t have much confidence in leaving their money, whether hard earned or ill-begotten gains, in a bank? You sleep better keeping it in the National Mattress Savings Bank in United States Dollars and not The ZIG despite assurances of its stability by the government.

Consequently, banks don’t have balances to spin around and do whatever creative investments, bank officials swear they never do with depositors money. Which means they have to come up with creative ways to make cents out of your dollars… Bank charges and transaction charges, the government even got into a piece that action by introducing the Intermediated Money Transfer Tax (IMTT) a 2% levy on all electronic transactions and yet another reason to have your money as cash.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you how some financial institutions practise daylight robbery by hiding your account balance, then charge you to check your balance and plus charging you for transacting when you have insufficient funds… sneaky sneaky… right?

My current favourite Mobile Wallet has been Omari, simply because it didn’t charge you for checking your balance, plus it generates virtual visa cards which work 100% of the time… A fly in the ointment is that you are currently unable to block the cards you create and instead have to jump through hoops to reach customer care so they can do it for you, while their competition lets you do this easily by yourself.

Such a feature is handy for when you don’t want a subscription to automatically renew, for example when you sign up for a trial service or when there isn’t sufficient balance to cover the transaction and you don’t want to be fined for the failed transactions... clever, right?

The more popular mobile wallet EcoCash is trying to get back into people’s good graces through an update on their mobile app so that now it wont charge you to check your balance… On one hand, its a welcome relief but on the other hand, I see they have been taking notes from the government’s playbook.

Create a problematic system then after enough complaints create a solution that “fixes” the problem you created first place and package it as an innovative solution and pat yourself on the back.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that the Reserve Bank Governor says that the rise in inflation being experienced by the ZiG is temporary and that it will be below 30% by 31 December. Well, in the kingdom of funny money, the taste of the the pudding is in the eating…

Whats been going in your neck of the woods?

~B