BY TATIRA ZWINOIRA ESCROW Systems (Pty) Ltd managing director Simbarashe Machanzi says daily maximum transaction limits on banking and mobile money platforms have reduced volumes on C-Trade. In an effort to curb the parallel market foreign currency rate currently at US$1:$130, the central bank in May reduced daily and monthly transaction limits to $20 000 and $100 000. However, the move has negatively affected Escrow Systems, a subsidiary of the Escrow Group, and creators of the mobile-based C-Trade trading platform. The platform has attracted 31 000 investor subscribers since its launch in 2018. “C-Trade has been operating well since inception and we have been experiencing a gradual steady growth in both registered accounts and number of trades executed. However, we feel the current conversion rate could be better,” Machanzi told NewsDay Business. “We are not pushing the volumes that we would want to push, the main reason being the daily maximum transaction limits on the banking and mobile money platforms that we are integrated to. There are clients who have called us complaining about the low daily maximum transaction limits that are in turn affecting their ability to invest more on the stock market through C-Trade” He added: “So, yes C-Trade has been affected by what is currently prevailing in the economic spectrum, but we are optimistic that the measures put in place by the authorities will result in positives across the board.” While the trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange has resumed since the third of this month, the suspension of trades on the main bourse negatively affected volumes on C-Trade. Machanzi said the effect came at a time when the C-Trade platform accounted for approximately a third of daily traded volumes. “On the latest report that we have, C-Trade accounted for 60 trades of the total 223 trades that were executed on the main exchange. This has consistently been between 25% to 30% of the number of trades executed on the stock market,” he said. “However, we still need to catch up on the actual values of the trades contributed by C-Trade, something that can be addressed by authorities increasing the daily maximum transaction limit on the payment gateways. I am glad to say that C-Trade can now receive RTGS inflows from investors for trading purposes.”