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🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Banking transformation · 2023 – present

From digital wallet to fully-fledged bank, with no downtime in between.

A Zimbabwean financial institution chose Veengu to migrate 1.9M legacy profiles, modernise its KYC, expand into merchant services, and finally decommission its legacy core entirely — all while operating one of the country's largest digital financial services.

End users
3M+
individual end-users today
Merchants
4,000+
active merchants migrated
Profiles
1.9M
migrated in Phase 1
Regulator
RBZ
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
Migration in three phases

Each phase shrank the legacy footprint and grew the Veengu footprint.

Phase 1 2023

KYC & compliance

LEGACY INFRASTRUCTURE86%
VEENGU14%
  • →OCR-based document scanning
  • →AML screening integration
  • →1.9M profiles migrated to Veengu
Phase 2 2024

Payment orchestration

LEGACY INFRASTRUCTURE73%
VEENGU27%
  • →New payment flows on Veengu rails
  • →Balances kept in legacy
  • →Cross-border remittance enabled
Phase 3 2025

Prepaid and acquiring migration

LEGACY INFRASTRUCTURE24%
VEENGU76%
  • →4,000+ merchants moved
  • →2.6M accounts moved
  • →Main legacy system decommissioning
The brief

Compliance and migration, at the same time

  • 1 Bring a comprehensive KYC process up to the standard the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe required.
  • 2 Migrate 1.9 million existing user profiles to a new master without losing data integrity.
  • 3 Introduce new payment types alongside the legacy stack rather than replacing it overnight.
  • 4 Phase out the legacy core in a way that operations would not notice.
Capabilities delivered today

One platform, every service

Cash deposits & withdrawals
P2P transfers
Bill payments (ZESA, airtime, insurance, fuel)
E-commerce
Business-portal payouts (float liquidation)
Merchant loyalty & cashback
Multi-currency accounts
Local + VISA card issuing
Local instant payments
Tens of payment recipients
Key integrations

Seamless plumbing into the existing ecosystem

USSD
USSD / ESB
Through customer middleware exposing Veengu standard APIs
SMS
SMS Gateway
Transaction notifications across all flows
RBZ
RBZ Reporting
Direct integration for regulatory compliance
VISA
VISA Issuing
Local-currency + international cards
Outcomes

What the customer has today

  • Regulatory compliance
    Fully aligned with RBZ's KYC and AML requirements; direct reporting integration.
  • Overnight cutover for 2.4M users
    A single planned overnight switchover moved millions of users to Veengu — an exceptional outcome for a migration at that scale.
  • Expanded financial services
    Multi-currency accounts, card issuing, local instant payments and a thriving merchant portal.
  • Operational consolidation
    A single modernised platform replacing fragmented legacy back-office systems.

Next phase: a core banking system for loans and deposits, and the final decommissioning of the legacy back-office.

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