Information we have suggests that Econet has been working on an internet payments component for EcoCash which was scheduled to be released this month. The release has however, as we have been told, has been pushed further and it’s not clear when it will be available to web developers and eCommerce companies to use.
According to a source at the company, the Application Programming Interface, API for short, will allow online merchants to process EcoCash payments on the web. It’s a component that has been requested by some companies locally, especially startups as now they either process EcoCash “online payments” manually (someone sitting with a phone, verifying payments and updating the eCommerce application) or a hybrid of sorts. It’s now clear however just how big this market of payments is for EcoCash and if they need to prioritise.
The only other option for online payments in Zimbabwe, apart from the very inconvenient PayPal and Zim issued credit (and prepaid debit) cards, is the Vpayments, a solution launched by Zimbabwe national payments switching company, ZimSwitch. Vpayments has however not been that visible locally a sign the uptake has been low.
Econet has reported that it now has a total 2.5 million mobile money subscribers. The company launched in September 2011 and has so far been pushing p2p transfers and merchant transactions.
Share
Home
15 comments
Good news indeed, really good news…we hope it wont need some crazy requirements like the Vpayments system…Just a plugin, like those wordpress plugins will do even more wonders
true, somehow these guys always find a way to complicate things that should not be complicated on the user’s end. it would be quite good if they break the trend.
they are too slow for my liking…we needed this yesterday!!
Today is tommorrow’s yesterday kkkk
brilliant! lol so we need it today 😛
lets hope they do not make it an enterprise service, someone needs to think of the little guys, creating opportunities. now that true empowerment
I would have thought this was supposed to be one of the first things to be done but well lets hope its cming with less bugs coz hey bad guys will try to whack it. But I am confident it will be up to standard since its being done by global leader in this Comviva.
This is a very welcome development. Well done Econet.
Is there an official statement?
regards,
inside sources say its scheduled for beta release 9 months from now. Don’t get too hopeful.
9 months is better than nothing at all. we patiently wait. 🙂
Our startup company has already developed and tested an api for online ecocash payments. All automated! We will be launching the application soon.
[…] little over 6 months ago, we wrote that Econet was working on an EcoCash internet payments gateway. The API, were had been told then, was supposed to have been made available to developers in July […]
[…] Econet had always been adamant of releasing the EcoCash API which we discovered they are using to set up an EcoCash online payments gateway. However, with Telecel, this seems a bit of a surprise especially with Telecel preaching […]
[…] issue of the EcoCash API has been elusive. First it was a rumour last year. EcoCash itself denied it officially, but those inside told us the company was indeed working on […]
[…] issue of the EcoCash API has been elusive. First, it was a rumour last year. EcoCash itself denied it officially, but those inside told us the company was indeed working on […]