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Makomborero Marumisa OyOsTech News
Every passing second simply makes it more and more difficult to deny that we are slowly shifting towards a cashless society.

A world where all that one has to do is pull out their phone or card to pay for everything ranging from everyday basics such as fuel, groceries and transport to some of the lighter pleasures such as music, software and applications.

While it can be argued what this may entail for some sections of our society, there is a world of benefits that can be harnessed from this new phenomenon.

Talk about convenience, removal of black markets, budget discipline, accountability and even risk reduction as only a glimpse of how this will positively impact us as a whole.

Various platforms such as websites and online stores are involved in this mode of purchasing and selling products online.

Probably the most evident benefit that online stores have to offer in a cashless society is convenience.

The brilliant thing about buying things online is that you no longer have to worry about carrying wads of cash in your purse or back pocket looking back every few seconds for suspicious-looking figures that may be lurking around the corner.

You no longer have to worry about winding ATM queues in order to get money for the week or about being excused from work after lunch to beat the bank after it closes down at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Whenever you want to buy something just pull out your phone. Whether you want to buy music, an app, furniture or even nowadays groceries, you can get them with ease online. Better yet, you can now transact anytime whether you are about to go to bed or you are sitting at the breakfast table. Rest assured, you can always make a transaction.

Another great aspect of purchasing online is budget discipline. Take a platform like OyOsMusic for example; it allows all Zimbabweans local and abroad to purchase home-grown music 24/7.

All you simply have to do is allocate a specific amount of funds to your account that you can use for whatever period you choose and you are guaranteed that the app will allow you to spend just that.

You can even allocate how much money is used on each payment gateway currently at your disposal. Using the same example once again, you can use gateways such as Ecocash, Telecash, Mastercard, Visa, Zimswitch, Paypal and PayNow to purchase music.

If you decide to use your Mastercard to buy music, when you are reviewing the money that you spent that month you know exactly where to look.

Something like this would be difficult to do in a society that runs on hard cash and one of the many benefits of making all your payments digital.

Another great thing about online stores is that all transactions are recorded so you are never in the dark as to where all your money went.

You can drop your wallet or lose your satchel and unless you had a tracker on those items you’ve lost them forever.

That’s almost never the case with online stores. Your money is always where you want it to be. You can check bank statements online or even register for updates on your phone as well as receive them via your email account.

They cannot be erased, stolen or destroyed by a third party unless they were granted access by you. It is an automatic process and you can be rest assured that your finances are in the right hands.

It also helps governments ward off crime because now that every transaction is put on paper, a paper trail is no longer that difficult to find and you can always track down a criminal easily.

This also means that you will starve black markets and ultimately promote more legit forms of buying and selling goods. Overall, buying and selling online is one of the things which has helped aid people in a society which is otherwise short of cash.

If people manage to harness the full benefits that online stores have to offer we might see less crime, more convenience, more accountable spending patterns and more and more people who find themselves swayed to remain faithful to their budgets. Online purchasing might just be thing we need to encourage ourselves to adopt to promote a cashless society.

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