Do banks and large clients in Zimbabwe ask for your POTRAZ licence number?
Short answer
Increasingly, yes. Banks, insurers, mobile network operators and large corporates are themselves on POTRAZ's priority inspection list and must hold written processing agreements with their suppliers. Expect tenders, supplier onboarding forms and due-diligence questionnaires to ask for your data controller licence number and your Data Protection Officer's details.
What the law says
Section 18 of the Act requires a controller to choose processors that provide sufficient guarantees of security and to bind them by contract; SI 155 section 10 requires a written data processing agreement. A bank that shares customer data with a courier, a printer, a call centre or a software vendor is therefore obliged to check and contract with that supplier. The simplest evidence a supplier can give is its own POTRAZ licence and DPO details, which show it is a regulated controller in its own right.
Example
A Harare printing company that produces bank statements and insurance policy documents receives, in the same month, supplier questionnaires from two banks and an insurer, each asking for its data controller licence number, DPO name, security measures and breach procedure, and each attaching a processing agreement to sign. The company that already has these wins the renewals; the one that has to explain why it is unlicensed is quietly dropped from the panel.
In practice
Put your POTRAZ licence number and DPO contact on your company profile and tender documents. Being able to answer a due-diligence questionnaire in an afternoon is becoming a condition of doing business with regulated customers, not just a legal nicety.
General information, not legal advice. This page covers Zimbabwean law only: the Cyber and Data Protection Act [Chapter 12:07], Statutory Instrument 155 of 2024 and POTRAZ’s 2025 Implementation Guidelines. It is not the EU GDPR and not South Africa’s POPIA. Fees, fine levels and deadlines are as gazetted and published by POTRAZ at 9 September 2026; check the latest POTRAZ notices before acting. Businesses named in examples are fictional.