On FastCash Money Transfer

AUTHOR'S NOTE: THIS ARTICEL WAS PUBLISHED BY THE NATION ON SUNDAY

In a bid to be abreast of the times in this era of a very fast growing rate in science and technology, most service providers, ranging from mobile phone network providers to banks and other money institutions, always have new ideas to maximize the effectiveness of their services.

With mobile phone operators, they do everything possible to make sure they provide services which will be deemed to be the best by their subscribers. This appears to be the best marketing strategy.

One service provider that does not want to lag behind in terms of service delivery is the Malawi Posts Corporation (MPC). Considering that money sent through the telegram system takes a bit long to reach the recipient, MPC introduced one of the fastest ways of sending and receiving money branded FastCash Money Transfer.

The whole procedure can only take five minutes and the recipient will be brandishing the hard cash afterwards. The demands of the process are not very involving. In fact the one sending you the money can just tell you to go and collect the money the moment he finishes processing sending procedures.

With no strings attached, the process is a very convenient way of sending and receiving money. But much as the system is very convenient, it sometimes plays tricks with the recipients. This is largely due to the system itself and then the issue of power blackouts.

Sometimes you may go to the Post Office with the aim of receiving the money that has been sent to you only to be told that the information that you have been given is not correct.

For instance, the Postmaster will tell you that the ID number that you have been given does not match with any number on the computers. You insist that the sender of the money repeated the number several times to make sure you did not copy the wrong number and the postmaster – to help you? – advises you to come probably an hour later.

Yet you are supposed to use the money just now. So what is the essence of FastCash Money Transfer if one can not retrieve his money as soon as possible?

This is what happened to a certain colleague of mine. He was supposed to use the money for transport to a certain place where he had been invited for an interview but he could not get his money instantly.

The following day the young man went to the Post Office again to collect his monies but he was told that there was a power blackout and that the computers which contained all the information could hardly operate because there was no standby generator.

One wonders why MPC decided to introduce this ‘fast’ way of transferring money even in Post Offices where they have no alternatives in terms of power.

If MPC knew that the operation would be useless in cases of power blackouts, they should have mounted standby generators which would come into use in cases of blackouts.

It goes without saying that before a company introduces a service system, it first of all considers all the shortfalls of the system. I wonder whether MPC looked at the demerits of this system of transferring money in Post Offices that do not have standby generators.

It also appears that the implementation of the system has not been maximized because of the fact that computers sometimes fail to recognize certain information at first and then recognize the same information later..