Remember the EcoCash Droid app that lived for one day? Well the thing that Econet did to make it go away – disabling long USSD codes – has just been reversed with a new campaign called Transact faster-faster. A Twitter user, one muushafarie, pointed us to an ad in a local daily this morning. EcoCash faster-faster looks designed to introduce easier ways to transact, a move that has probably come as a reaction to Telecel TeleCash unique selling point – simplicity.
The long codes, such as *151*1*Amount# for buying airtime, cover transactions such as making payments, cashing out, and balance enquiries. They succeed at this simplicity. At least for those subscribers that will save these long codes as “contacts” in their phones.
Here’s the ad:
The Droid App
There’s no telling if the EcoCash android app that awakened everyone to this simplicity will be coming back. But we’re likely going to see other developers come up with their own in coming weeks.
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10 comments
Where does to pin go? Do they prompt for it at the end or are these all pin-less transactions?
Yes, the pin is prompted just after dialling the long code
No password…..
So if my phone is stolen, the thief can wipe my account!!!!
Typical econet they never think through things when it comes to competition especially from telecel…..
Actually NO! You put the password at the end to confirm transaction. So the ideas is you can’t PRE PROGRAM the pin ever: it has to be manually entered every time. The thief could wipe your account BEFORE, but NOW its impossible: even though less convenient.
I can imagine trying to remember all those codes…even to save all of them in my phone…unique, but not so useful in my opinion.
Mate – companies like Mobi-Apps Telecoms in South Africa have started creating a portal for all these messy codes. It becomes ridiculously difficult to remember all of them off by heart.
Its sounds good
Now one can pay a merchant without causing a jam at the pay point.
More and more codes will be created and how do people start remembering all these funky codes? Silly networks!!
heavy