Central Bank of Zambia contracts IMX to implement a country-wide, real-time system to monitor foreign exchange transactions.

IMX Software announced today that it has concluded contracts with Bank of Zambia for the implementation of a centralized, real-time system to monitor foreign exchange transactions processed by all licensed bureau de change operators across Zambia.

Driven by mounting concerns about money laundering, the Bank of Zambia has identified the bureau de change industry as a preferred channel for clearing the proceeds of criminal activity. As a service industry, bureaux de change sales offices inevitably deal with walk-in customers and have limited resources and tools to carry out rigorous customer verification. To-date the most effective way of managing the risks associated with money laundering in the sector has been to impose a limit on the value customers can transact per day through a single bureau de change location. This approach, however, has a number of shortcomings due to its manual nature.

Bank of Zambia has chosen IMX to provide an automated system to track bureau de change transactions as they occur. To meet this requirement, IMX will implement its GTS-Retail Hub software in the Bank of Zambia’s head office in Lusaka. This will be connected to GTS-Retail Point-of-Sale software installed in every branch of every bureau de change company operating throughout Zambia. Bank of Zambia surveillance officers will be able to monitor trading activity across the entire industry from a computer, tablet or smartphone. The solution will include sanctions list screening, suspicious transaction reporting and cash threshold reporting.

This initiative will provide the bureau de change companies with IMX’s industry-leading retail foreign exchange system with all the customer service improvements, administrative efficiencies and controls inherent in a modern point-of-sale solution. In addition, the unique Business Continuity Mode provides an offline capability that allows tellers to keep serving customers during periods of network downtime with no loss of transactional data for centralised surveillance purposes.
Rob Stansell, Managing Director of IMX in South Africa, says: “The Bank of Zambia deployment is a new and innovative approach for the industry and in due course we expect to apply our expertise in delivering this new industry model to other developing markets that are subject to similar know-your-customer and anti-money laundering pressures that are demanding reforms to trading and regulatory reporting practices”.