Econet announced yesterday via an SMS to subscribers that residence of Harare can now pay their council bills (rates and water) using EcoCash as more practical use of the mobile money service are rolled out.
We weren’t sure how direct an entry especially because she referred to it as “mobile banking”. New information we have received from sources in the industry says there indeed is a more direct mobile money project going on at Telecel.
Last year, Telecel Zimbabwe pulled a ‘surprise of the year’ move on all of us; A mobile operator killed its mobile money service. No one knows (well, except them and probably ZimSwitch) when exactly Skwama was killed because it was done silently, only to be disclosed when we asked about the disappeared product in September last year.
Econet Wireless and Mahindra Comviva recently won a Global Telecoms Business (GTB) award for the EcoCash mobile money transfer project. Mahindra Comviva are the suppliers of the platform that EcoCash runs on.
About a month ago, Econet introduced a new ultra-convenient way to pay for DStv subscriptions. A few days later, we tried it ourselves and it worked as promised; seamless!
Without any widely adopted internet payments platform, despite the existence of Vpayments, and some EcoCash internet payment trials, eCommerce in Zimbabwe is struggling to take off. But there are startups that are moving in early regardless, positioning themselves for when the Zimbabwean will rely on the internet to shop.
Between December 2012 and February this year, Econet announced in quick succession, the integration of its EcoCash mobile money transfer service to traditional banks, allowing EcoCash users to transfer money seamlessly between their bank accounts and EcoCash Wallets. It was CBZ, TN Bank, Stanbic, Agribank then ZB Bank.
We just got information that Econet and Paynet, a local payments & payments software company, have partnered to offer a new EcoCash service that will enable companies to pay salaries directly into their employees’ EcoCash wallets. The service will likely be announced in the coming days.
Last week, Barclays announced a money transfer service called Cashsend that lets the bank’s customers with debit cards send money to anyone in Zimbabwe via an ATM. The service is one of the most innovative to come out of a bank in Zimbabwe and rivals other money transfer services on the market like EcoCash, Western Union and TextaCash.
If you thought being able to pay for your DStv at a supermarket till point was convenient (it was, we tried it), this is just going to be awesome. It’s one development we know most middle income families have been waiting for.
Recently I had to change banks because the one I was banking with is apparently going under. And Their customer care service is at its worst but that’s not the issue; I was essentially I was told by the executives at the top was that they couldn’t let me withdraw my money (we’re talking small middle income amounts here) and that I should stop pestering them.
Sometime in the midst of September 1958 the Bank of America began its Visa card program by mailing 60,000 unsolicited credit cards over all the country. This resulted in the first most successful implementation of a public general credit card and to this day Visa has the largest market share in the credit card industry
Earlier in the day we learnt and posted that Econet would launching a mobile phone to POS payment solution tonight. We’re just from the event, and most of the information we had is what was announced tonight. The company is introducing its own POS terminals to accept payments from EcoCash mobile wallets. The products is called EcoCash Debit Card.
Remember when Econet promised they’d be launching a product that would excite the whole EcoCash ecosystem? It’s probably happening tonight.
When we first posted the announcement of the EcoCash Tariff review by Econet a few days ago, we noted that small amounts, that is most value ranges below $50, had actually become more expensive, while the larger amounts are significantly cheaper.