As our Zambian clients are well aware, we have had nothing but trouble with Stanbic Bank of Zambia this year. Our business account has been locked/frozen multiple times, and it’s a huge hassle to get access again each time. In the meantime we can’t confirm receipt of payments so that we can send receipts to our clients. And we can’t manage our funds to pay bills and so on.
When I was in the country in May 2024 I approached Immigration and let them know that I wanted an Immigration permit for one reason and one reason only: To open a new bank account. I suppose my honesty must have flummoxed the first person I spoke to, so he referred me to a supervisor. The supervisor told me that I didn’t need to go that far (i.e., get a permit just to open a bank account); all I needed to do was talk to his unemployed friend who could “assist” me if I just “bought him lunch”. Of course, we all know what the quoted words in that last sentence mean: bribes.
I was desperate at this point. I joke to everyone I know that all of my grey hair is the result of dealing with Stanbic for the last sixteen years. It may be a slight exaggeration, but it’s not far from the truth. One of these days I will write a book, or at least document sixteen years of torment at the hands of Stanbic on an anonymous blog.
Anyway, considering my desperation I followed the supervisor’s advice and contacted his unemployed “friend”. However, besides the fact that I had no way to know how hungry said friend was planning to be at lunch time, it turned out this guy didn’t know anything about business accounts. So I just gave up and told him where to go.
This is relevant because my grandly named “business banker” at Stanbic decided in about June or July to start their officially sanctioned harassment project on NinerNet, known euphemistically as “KYC”, Know Your Client. It’s completely legitimate, of course, because since I opened our account in 2008 I may have changed my identity, and with the vast sums of money that our clients pay us NinerNet could single-handedly be financing all of the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan … on and on the list and our largesse grows. Stanbic harassed us about a year or two ago, and I finally told them that either they could close our account and I would move our business out of the country, stop paying their exorbitant monthly fees, and stop paying taxes to the ZRA … or they could just let us carry on running our legitimate business as usual. I, of course, have no idea how the brain trust that runs Stanbic thinks, but that fended off the harassment.
Until now. Our business banker again made threats that our account would be closed if we didn’t produce a permit, despite the fact that we obviously produced a TP (temporary permit) to open the account in 2008. So the whole reason I abandoned the plan to open a new account back in May was now being forced on us by brainless bean counters at Stanbic. And then one day, we were locked (again!) out of online banking.
We tried to contact our “business banker” at Stanbic, but he was apparently on leave. Please note that when someone is on leave from Stanbic they do not feel the need to shift that person’s work to another employee so that the bank can continue serving their clients; you just have to wait until they get back from the beach to get help. Not satisfied with this, I reached out to another Stanbic employee. Miracle of miracles, I had access to our Stanbic account a couple of days later.
But that was the last straw. We can’t go on wondering from one day to the next if we’re going to have access to our account. We can’t go on wondering if we’re going to have access to our funds, that we have earned from our clients and had paid to us in our account to pay our suppliers. Tying to do business under these conditions is intolerable.
So we have pulled the plug. Starting with our invoices this month, we will no longer be invoicing our Zambian clients in kwachas. We will squeeze the few remaining kwachas in our account out to pay our suppliers — data centres, domains registrars, phone companies, “tax consultants” — and then we will abandon our Stanbic accounts. (What’s the point in jumping through Stanbic’s hoop to close them formally?!) By the end of September 2024 we will no longer accept payments into our Stanbic account. Our September invoices will be issued by our Canadian company and will be payable in US dollars. We are in the process of de-registering NinerNet Communications in Zambia, and we have stopped filing tax returns and paying taxes to the ZRA.
Zambia has won; we admit defeat.
We are not paying billions of kwachas in taxes; we are just a small Zambian business trying to do the right thing. We are trying to run a business that provides excellent service to Zambians, and we are trying to pay our taxes to contribute to the Zambian economy, an economy that is hobbled by ZESCO inflicting load shedding for up to 20 hours a day. (There are only 24 hours in a full day!) In return we are treated like absolute crap by Stanbic, ostensibly enforcing rules that make our ability to carry on doing business impossible. These conditions make it impossible for NinerNet Communications, a Zambian-registered and tax-paying company, to continue doing business in Zambia. And if one Zambian small business is driven out of the country in this manner, it’s only a matter of time before all Zambian small businesses are driven out of business.
We regret that we have been forced into this situation, but we see no other option at this time. In early 2025 NinerNet in Zambia will be reborn under a new management structure, and will again have a Zambian bank account, but not with Stanbic. When this happens we will again be able to invoice our clients and accept payments in kwachas. Until then, though, Zambian clients will be issued invoices by our Canadian company and accept payments only in US dollars, and our Canadian company will pay taxes to the Canadian government and will not pay taxes to the Zambian government.
