Death, taxes, vending, the unfair cost of data, high mobile money tariffs; that’s just part of a long list of things that many people accept as part of Zimbabwean life. We can’t work around most of those issues, so for good reason, any solution for any of these challenges is usually celebrated.
Take mobile money tariffs as an example. Sometime last year, we shared a hack that gave users of the mobile money service EcoCash, a way to pay less in transaction fees. A local developer followed this up with a mobile money tariff calculator app which calculated and compared tariffs from the 2 most popular mobile money service providers, EcoCash and TeleCash.
While a few things might have changed in local mobile money services since then, (a new service provider entered the market and some tariffs were actually revised downwards) it’s still always worth exploring the cheaper option for sending money.
That same Mobile Money tariff calculator app has now been tweaked to catch up with some of the changes in local mobile money services. According to a recent update of the app (it’s available on Google Play), the app now incorporates calculations and comparisons for OneWallet and Nettcash and the user interface has been dusted up a bit.
The value proposition of the app is still pretty much the same; you get to figure out the cheapest alternative for sending money and any saving that can be accumulated from splitting a transaction.
The inclusion of Nettcash on the app is key in all of this because the service is network agnostic, meaning that it’s always an option for sending and receiving money for anyone on any network.
To be fair, the amounts saved from this whole tariff comparison aren’t jaw dropping, but the thousand plus users of the app will tell you that the option to pay less is always welcome. Until the regulators do act on tariff adjustment it’s one smart way to work around one of those certainties in life that we ordinarily can’t avoid.
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2 comments
Been running it for about a week. A really nice improvement on an already great app! Even if you aren’t specifically trying to save a buck, (yah the amounts saved are not that jaw dropping) its really useful as a tariff sheet.
In business, you gain by saving here and there, not a one large lump-some! What these guys are doing should be recommended and looking ahead, l would encourage them to go into website which compares prices on most of basic stuff from cooking oil, hupfu, etc, or maybe expand the app